Shows / Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholic's Anonymous, wrote in 1952, "If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand." Wilson suggested that if we could identify and continually surrender these unrealistic and unrecognizable demands, that we may then be able to accomplish what he imagined to be recovery's next frontier - something he called emotional sobriety. Flash forward 70 years, and join psychotherapists and…
Episodes
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
The Dubious Importance of "Being Right"
Thom, Joe, and Patrick (with a late episode appearance by Allen, fresh off his somatic therapy workshop) discuss how our individual conceptions of rightness…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Adapting to the Unexpected
One essential component of emotional sobriety is our willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, developing the best possible attitude towards them. This…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
What Aren’t We Thankful For?
Our resistance to change and our inability to properly feel grief is connected on some levels to a lack of faith in our capacities to grow and cope. With…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
On the Rocks
Patience and practice are what Thom, Allen, and now Patrick attempt to bring to bear in a set of sudden life-altering, life-threatening circumstances that mark…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
“There Ain’t No Easy Cancer”
Thom returns to the pod to bring Allen and Patrick up to speed on his last few challenging months, and unveils the plan for the new book he’ll be collaborating…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
New Recovery From Trauma and PTSD
Allen and Joe C. delve their personal experiences with trauma in trying to highlight how these principles of Emotional Sobriety can still come through for us…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Recovery in Poetry with Janine McJannett
RTT (Rapid Transformational) Therapist, Hypnotherapist and coach Janine McJannet has spent the better part of her life reckoning with the impact of being an…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Daily Practices on Recovery's Frontier (with Patrick McAteer)
Having flourished in his connection to others through the use of Zoom and WhatsApp during the pandemic, Friendly Circle Berlin Group regular Patrick McAteer…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Oh, the Places We’ll Go (with Joe C.)
Allen and Joe find an unlikely Emotional Sobriety kindred spirit in Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go," a classic children's book that doubles as an…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Emotional Sobriety in Residential Treatment
Melanie Gulde, program director of the soon-to-open Divided Sky residential recovery retreat located in Ludlow, Vermont, drops by discuss her new approach to…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
It’s Never Too Late
In a later season of her life, Susan Chandler had to reckon with the collapse of a marriage, unemployment, the loss of a community, and horrific traumas both…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Awakening Our Truest Selves
To be loved, to be accepted, and to belong, we early in life construct an identity that, as Allen describes, is like “building a foundation on someone else’s…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Surviving and Thriving in Motherhood with Celeste Yvonne
Celeste Yvonne, certified recovery coach and author of It’s Not About the Wine: The Loaded Truth Behind Mommy Wine Culture joins us to chat about motherhood…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Self-Esteem and Emotional Sobriety with Roger Andes
Therapist Roger Andes, longtime friend and frequent collaborator on Thom and Allen’s 12-Step workshops, drops in to discuss his latest experiences with…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Recovery's Paradoxes
Living peacefully with the irreconcilable is at the core of what creates change. Thom and Allen alternately draw upon their own journeys towards acceptance -…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Keeping Cool with Carol Carter
On a weekend of record heatwaves, to escape the crushing anxiety Thom and Patrick invite longtime collaborator Carol Carter on the pod to gauge her emotional…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Change Calls the Tune We Dance To
As much as we strive to cultivate our emotional sobriety, learning to lean on self-support rather than environmental support, those expectations and rules…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Let Fear Be Your Teacher
Health care and financial insecurity are just a couple of the subjects Thom, Joe, and Patrick touch on as they contemplate how life’s most challenging dynamics…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Emotional Sobriety & Self-Respect
What does it mean to respect ourselves, and how can we put it to work once we’ve attained some physical sobriety and begin to move towards greater emotional…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Every Life Is Worth a Novel
Allen references Erving Polster’s book while contemplating how the broad span of our lives have a dramatic richness and fullness that can illuminate crucial…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Depression's Long Game
Picking up with Thom Rutledge about his recent struggles with depression, something that’s been with him since his early days of recovery. This form of crisis…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Freedom at Cost
The team unpacks their month of hard knocks and give their best shot at illustrating how life's heaviest challenges can deepen our recovery, aid us on the path…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Shifting to the Best Possible Attitude
Part of our mission statement as we move towards greater emotional freedom is to have the best possible attitude towards life, towards ourselves, and towards…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
A New Way of Making Amends
Foundational to Emotional Sobriety is the recognition that we aren’t bad people trying to be good people. We’re simply trying to take responsibility for our…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
When the Road Meets the Rubber
Decades after his service in the Vietnam War, Allen realized the extent of his disability and trauma after a chance encounter with a fellow veteran at a 12…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
When the Rubber Meets the Road
With some inspiration from W. Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis (one of the only self-help books Thom has ever read) and Allen’s metaphor of the…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
True Acceptance
Brian Lutz and Thom Rutledge recently encountered critical challenges in their marriages that tested their capacity for acceptance. Acceptance of their…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
The Decision Maker
Locating our authentic self in the midst of our warring inner committee and standing our ground - not against others but for ourselves - is at the crux of…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Emotional Sobriety, Stewardship & Service (Part Two)
A we engage with the recovery impetus to be of service to others, In addition to the reward there may also an activation of guilt and other issues tied to our…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Emotional Sobriety, Stewardship & Service (Part One)
Recovery (and Emotional Sobriety) are contagious! Joe Chisholm returns to the pod to chat with Thom and Patrick about the benefits we can reap from looking…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
A New Perspective on Failure
As we become more awakened in emotional sobriety, we begin to challenge all our old ideas. The power struggle of emotional dependency and the temptation to…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Authentic Values
How can we learn to live in better alignment with our values? Some of our values are unconscious, and benefit by being brought into the light. We run into…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Ripple Effect
Thom and Allen hold down the fort to discuss the role of honesty in therapy. Allen shares the profoundly positive feedback he received from someone who brought…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
“Maddiction” with Joe C.
It feels good to judge. What does that reveal about ourselves, and how can we work on putting this energy to better use? Exploring how our tendency towards…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Radical Honesty
Thom and Allen discuss what it means to be "radically honest." Radical honesty begins with self-honesty. We can’t do it with other people if we don’t first…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Practice Makes Practice
Thom and Patrick dig into their rocky pre-recovery days, charting the evolution their consciousnesses have taken. While encountering challenges, keep it…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Philosophy over Psychology with Tom Potash
Allen and Thom welcome longtime contributor to the Emotional Sobriety community Tom Potash to talk about his decades-long recovery journey, the letting go that…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
A Spiritual Path Through Emotional Sobriety
Recovery stalwart Richard Warner had to announce himself as a newcomer after decades in the program, a formative experience that he’s grateful for today. With…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Living Consciously with Roger Andes
Roger Andes discusses his body-oriented work as a therapist, cultivating connections with others and within himself revolving around the preservation of…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Meditating on the New Year with Herb Kaighan
Longtime collaborator, first-time guest Herb K. joins us to discuss the role of meditation in his daily practice, and how being in alignment with reality is…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
More Will Be Revealed with Joe C.
This week we share our thoughts on receiving & offering guidance to other addicts across a wide span of experience as we navigate the recovery highway. Joe C…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Higher and Friendly Powers with Dr. Peg O’Connor
Peg joins us to talk about her more secular conception of a Higher Power, informed by her background in philosophy and the life and work of William James…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Our Inner Civil War
If you’re disturbed about something, we encourage investigating what’s beneath that disturbance. This episode we explore the psychological mechanism called…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
The Importance (and Difficulty!) of Our Daily Practice
With the serenity prayer, we try to figure out the things in our lives that we have the power to change. Here, Thom and Patrick mull the discipline that it…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Thanksgiving Survival Guide
In preparation for the forthcoming high calorie sit-downs many of us are having with friends and family this week, Allen and Patrick run down a list of the…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
The Holidays: Come As You Are
Allen’s big Italian dinners. Thom getting kicked by a horse. Patrick learning what to do with his hands, now that he’s no longer getting loaded. There’s a lot…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Between Wisdom & Discipline
At a certain point (or maybe various points) along the recovery way, we each develop an awareness of what we might call our own inner wisdom, but rather than…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Thom & Allen at the ICSAA
Allen tells us about his formative years enlisting in the marines, Vietnam, alcohol and drugs. Thom of early struggles working as a counselor at an addiction…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Making the Most of Fellowship & Support
Let's return to fundamental questions of what Emotional Sobriety is, and why we consider it the “next frontier." How do we build support systems, and how do we…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
What Progress Am I Making?
How can we measure our progress (or lack there of) in productive ways? Learning to separate from self-condemnation & create/embrace health self-critique…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Room for All
Let’s exercise more authority and agency over our lives. Moving towards a focus on being rather than having. A bit of Buddhist wisdom: Be careful to not…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Living in the Moment
Let’s talk about how essential the practice of living in the moment is to the condition we call emotional sobriety. AND about how radical living in the moment…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
A New Self-Esteem
Defining a self-esteem based on humility and an appropriate estimation of ourselves, our successes and failures. Cultivating this newfound sense of self is…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Secular Recovery with Joe C.
Author and podcast host Joe C. of Rebellion Dogs Publishing joins Allen and Thom to discuss a “yes, and” rather than “no, but,” maximally inclusive approach to…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Managing Anxiety with Gina Ryan
We’re joined this week by Gina Ryan, who in her work with clients and on her weekly podcast imparts some of her vision for how to live with anxiety, bring its…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Emotional Sobriety at Work
In observance of Labor Day, let’s talk about how to keep our emotional center of gravity in an environment that taxes us constantly. Whether it’s financial…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
What Love Is
Allen and Thom reunite after some time off for labor and travel. Today we spend some time digging into intimacy and relationships, with a spotlight on Thom’s…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Neutralizing Fear
From relapses to climate catastrophes to dropping the ball at work, fears of both the immediate and existential varieties assert themselves in our daily lives…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Recovery 2.0 with Tommy Rosen
Allen's conception of recovery as a consciousness of freedom meets Tommy's holistic recovery approach that doesn’t shy away from the 12 steps. Our guest…
- Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery
Getting Disappointments to Work for Us
The pursuit of greater emotional sobriety can allow us to mobilize our disappointments to take action in our lives, rather than being demoralized and…