What Is Powerlessness? Step One of the 12-Steps of AA

If something still feels absolutely unacceptable to you, the best thing I know to do is pray—not to get what you want, but to be able to accept what is. If others are critical of you, choose not to let your satisfaction or self-worth depend on the opinions of others. If things aren’t going according to plan, consider that Learn What Spiritual Malady Is And The Role It Plays In Your Recovery there might be a plan better than the one you made. If you’re not getting the results you wanted, keep in mind that what you’re getting may be better in the long run than what you had imagined. But then it occurred to me that my moods are like the weather—they come and go of their own accord and are not up to me to fix.

Step 1 of AA acknowledges the need for members to hit rock bottom to understand alcohol addiction’s destructive nature. Every mistake I made before I became sober I’ve replayed and created sequels for while in recovery. I am stubborn and have always had to learn things the hard way. This road has been painful, embarrassing and oft times humiliating, but it has given me the greatest rewards and what I would consider a blessed life.

What Do You Feel Powerless Over? When Are You at Your Most Powerful?

We sometimes feel as if we are the victim and point fingers at other people or situations. This kind of thinking prevents us https://g-markets.net/sober-living/art-therapy-create-to-recover/ from looking at our powerlessness. Accepting our powerlessness opens us up to the willingness for a Higher Power’s help.

• There was no such thing as doing it successfully; if we drank, we would get drunk and self-destruct, causing chaos wherever we would go.
• You aren’t powerless when it comes to entering treatment or a recovery program.
• For instance, as soon as the cyber agency of Yunlian county became aware of what it called a serious “internet rumor” in 2017, it contacted the cyber unit of the county PSB to investigate.
• Powerlessness refers to a lack of control, and it helps you realize that there are things you can do to treat your addiction and create the life you want.
• Usually if you’re taking care of something within your power, there is a sense of strength, ease, and groundedness.

“You might recognise that you have to lower your standards, and that it’s not because you don’t want to work hard, but because you simply can’t do everything you used to do before,” says Homan. As you might expect, most people’s sense of autonomy immediately fell off a cliff, but Anicich’s participants began to bounce back surprisingly quickly. Although they had not experienced a complete recovery by the end of the 10 days, the sense of powerless and authenticity were both heading towards the pre-pandemic levels recorded in a separate sample, taken in September 2019. These previous studies had all tended to look at individual crises, rather than global events. There is no doubt that this loss of personal control will have affected our wellbeing, but Anicich’s recent research suggests that many people have coped much better than they might have initially expected with the new challenges.

One day at a time vs Forever

Thinking about this can help you learn from your current situation. You can evaluate the decisions that led to your current feelings of powerlessness and create an action plan to prevent repeating those decisions in the future. Appio suggests analyzing times you have felt empowered and were able to take action.