EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY

by Bill Wilson

I think that many oldsters who have put our AA to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows and with God.

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security and perfect romance urges quite appropriate to age 17 prove to be impossible and how very painful to discover finally that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been , but still find ourselves unable to get off the merry-go-round.

How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living well, thats not only the neurotics problem its the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.

Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. Thats the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to and its a hell of a spot literally. How shall our unconscious from which so many fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task.

Ive recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones folks like you and me commencing to get results. Last autumn, depression having no really rational cause at all almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for anther long, chronic spell. Considering the grief Ive had with depressions, it wasnt a bright prospect.

I kept asking myself, "Why cant the 12 Steps work to release depression?" By the hour I stared at the St. Francis prayer "It is better to comfort than be comforted." Here was the formula all right, but why didnt it work?
Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence almost absolute dependence on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them, and when defeat came, so did my depression.

There wasnt a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA (indeed!) and upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.

Then only could I be free to love as St. Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love and expressing a love appropriate to each relation to life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself of Gods love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me, and I couldnt possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.
For my dependency meant demand for the possession and control of the people and conditions surrounding me.

This seems to be the primary healing circuit: An outgoing love of Gods creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current cant flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.

Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any AA of 6 months working with a new 12 Step case. If the case says "to the devil with you!" the 12th Stepper only smiles and turns to another case. He doesnt feel frustrated or rejected. If his next case responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, yet gives none back to him, the Sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesnt feel rejected, instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy. And if his next following case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the Sponsor is most joyful without any demand for a return.
The really stabilizing thing for him was having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was St. Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand.

In the first 6 months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics not a one responded, yet this work kept me sober. It wasnt a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give not out of demanding I receive.

Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy demand. Let us, with Gods help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love. We may then be able to 12 Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety.

Of course, I havent offered you a really new idea only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own "hexes" at depth. Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.