To me, the hardest part of trauma and addiction recovery is taking radical personal responsibility for it— while staying radically compassionate and realistic with myself.
The truth is, for a long time, my trauma had me convinced there was no point in trying to take responsibility for my recovery.
My trauma told me that I couldn’t change anything anyway, so why bother?
Of course, paradoxically, at the same time, my trauma was telling me EVERYTHING I was experiencing was my fault— and EVERYTHING I had to do was my responsibility. Including the stuff I couldn’t do then even if I’d desperately wanted to.
To me the essence of depression is that flat, helpless, hopeless experience where you truly don’t believe anything you do matters. Learned helplessness.
Throw into that mix the reality that I never, not once, came away from an interaction from my father believing I was anything other than incompetent, inadequate, or in trouble.
How on earth was I supposed to “take responsilbity” for my recovery in any way that was not self-punitive, self-hating, self-destructive?
I had no model for “responsibility” being a positive, supportive thing. A tool.
Hell, I didn’t even have a model for “goals’ being a supportive concept. To me, “goals” were those things that just set you up to fail and to get sh*t from other people.
(Notably your very successful, publicly renowned father.)
Consequently, I came to believe that any change that happened in my life would have to be passive.
Maybe my life could change— but it would have to be done TO me. Because I certainly couldn’t make changes in my life.
I think one of the reasons I latched on to self-help literature the way I did was because it truly was the first time I was ever exposed to goals as a supportive tool that didn’t have to evoke shame.
And in evolving my approach to trauma recovery, I finally came to understand that we desperately NEED to take responsibility for our role— in recovery, not in the trauma that injured us in the first place, which was neither our fault nor our responsibility.
But we need to understand recovery in a way that is radically different from what most of us were conditioned to associate with that word.
We need to step away from the “drill sergeant” in our head, the inner prosecutor, the inner critic— because truthfully, they don’t have much to contribute to actual conversations about responsibility in recovery.
Responsibility and accountability can be core values of ours in trauma recovery— and we can understand and leverage them with compassion and realism and patience with ourselves.
We can understand how destructive our old conditioning around those words has been— and we can be patient with ourselves as we shift our understanding of those words.
To me, “responsibility” is my commitment to my “parts” and inner child that I will not abandon them, come hell or high water. I will “respond” to them when they need me. I will be responsible for their care and protection— no matter what.
To me, “accountability” is my commitment to those same parts that I will not do what I used to do— ignore my own needs (i.e., their needs), deny my need for recovery, pretend that any of this is about “strength” or “intelligence” as opposed to tools and philosophy and commitment.
To me, responsibility and accountability are 100% the most compassionate, supportive ways survivors can relate to ourselves.
We just have to strip out the conditioned BS (Belief Systems) around those words.
Breathe. Blink. Focus.
