The Importance of Relationships for People in Recovery
By Geoff Thompson, MA CCC
Program Director
Sunshine Coast Health Center
We are relational beings, which means that we were born to live with others. The evidence for this seems overwhelming. Some psychologists believe that we are ‘hardwired’ for relationships. Our brains are designed to be with other people. A famous psychologist, Roy Baumeister, argues that the reason human children take so long to become independent—compared with any other animal—is that they have to learn how to live with others.
As you know, one of the worst dynamics of addiction is that it isolates the user. Loneliness is a feeling that all addicts have. This isn’t just the feeling of boredom because you have no one to go out with on a Friday night; it is a deep and intrusive feeling that you are separated from the rest of the world. As one client put it, “I used to go out on the street and see people smiling and wonder how they could be happy.” Of course, using drugs usually gets rid of the feeling, at least temporarily.
So, one of the keys to recovery is to feel connected with others. This is a human thing, a natural yearning of individuals. It’s a big part of what gives us meaning in life, what makes us happy.
The old Greek philosopher, Aristotle, said that without friends no one would choose to live, even if he had money and health and fame. We know that one of the worst punishments for people is to deprive them of the community of others (ostracism). Being ostracized is considered the worst punishment. In China, for instance, someone who goes against the prescribed behaviors is often ostracized. Posters with the person’s face and name tell people in the community not to talk to the person. In some religions, being excommunicated is a grave punishment. And a few centuries ago, being banished from the land was considered a fate worse than death.
Being shunned by others or excluded from a group increases activity in the part of your brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. This is the part of your brain that is also stimulated when you feel physical pain. So some psychologists have argued that when you feel shunned, you feel the same “emotional unpleasantness” that you endure when you are in physical pain.
And psychologists have discovered—to their great surprise—that many computer users feel ostracized when they are ignored in chat rooms. The name they’ve given this is “cyber-ostracism.”
Psychologist Bruce Alexander observed that addicts need to hang out together. Because they have distanced their clean and sober family and friends, they find a sense of belonging with other users—not an ideal situation but better than nothing.
An interesting fact is that we know from research that when we feel loved and supported, our self-esteem rises. On the other hand, if we don’t feel support of others, then our self-esteem is low. This is useful knowledge for counselors because if someone tells us that he has low self-esteem, he is also telling us that he does not feel connected with others. He’s missing an essential part of what he needs for recovery.
Part One: Group Therapy at Sunshine Coast
If you are an alumni of Sunshine Coast, you know that we use a lot of group therapy. There is a reason for this. Addicts tend to be lonely, feeling as if they don’t belong. And this, of course, means they have low self-esteem. The idea of using group, rather than relying exclusively on individual therapy is, in part, to help clients in early recovery regain a sense of belonging, to realize that there is nothing wrong with them, that they are not different. And a nice by-product of this is that the client’s self-esteem improves.
As well as connecting with others, group therapy is also a good way to get to know yourself. It is one of those peculiar things about humans that they gain most of their self awareness not from figuring out things for themselves but by getting feedback from others. Some of you may have learned about the Johari Window. According to this psychology model, we are blind to some parts of ourselves; others, however, are not. They see things that we don’t know about ourselves, and group therapy provides the opportunity for us to learn about this blind side.
But group therapy is more important than simply learning about our blind side. Irvin Yalom, the guru of group therapy, says that you can know yourself only by getting input from other people. Who you think you are as a person is based in great part on how others treat you. (By the way, that’s one of the main reasons why those who feel loved have good self-esteem.)
Part Two: Sense of belonging
The internet has become part of our natural need to feel related to others. Those entering college report that they spend from one to five or more hours each week on social networking sites, such as Facebook. If you understand the importance of relationships to human beings, then it’s really no surprise why these sites are so popular, not to mention text messaging.
Eugene O’Neill, the great addict-writer, said that the reason he got loaded was because he never felt a sense of belonging in the world. He never felt part of… until he got drunk. His solution was to find a sense of belonging, to feel part of something, but without the need for the booze. Although he knew nothing of AA or addiction treatment, he figured out one of the key dynamics of recovery—it’s important to feel a sense of belonging.
If you were a client at Sunshine Coast, you remember we talked constantly about getting a support group. Many people in early recovery don’t pay as much attention to a support group as they should. But if you realize that this is a natural human thing that is necessary for happiness, it might help you understand just how powerful being supported is—and why it’s worth the effort to find a group of people. Those who have support networks have people who can listen to them and treat them as important people. The sense of being listened to is important for everyone but particularly for those who are in pain.
Part Three: Feeling connected with others
At Sunshine Coast, we define addiction with the great psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who said that addiction was a response to living a live that was not particularly comfortable, which seemed to have no direction, in which you felt you did not really fit in. Frankl called this living a life that had no personal meaning.
One of the important things to recognize from Frankl is that addiction is serving a specific purpose for the addict. It allows him to exist in a world in which he feels he does not belong. In other words, addiction is a substitute for living a meaningful life.
The solution to addiction was, for Frankl, to live a life that feels personally meaningful. If you live this life, then the addiction serves no purpose. And this is one of the things we’ve been discovering about recovery. Those who are living lives where they feel are worthwhile, where they have good self-esteem, have little interest in getting loaded—the drugs no long serve a purpose.
If we had to pick one reason why alumni of Sunshine Coast slipped or relapsed after treatment, it would be hard to find a better one than difficulty in relationships. The alumni who have had slips often call us up. Inevitably, what triggered the relapse was a situation in which they no longer felt comfortable in a relationship (or they were still feeling isolated and alone).
Part Four: The good and the bad of relationships
In this article we’ve been talking this month about relationships and their importance for living the good life. And when you are living a good life, one where you feel a sense of belonging, then drugs lose their power.
But not all relationships are necessarily healthy ones.
We have a natural need to find a sense of belonging. Studies of the modern ‘gangs’ have shown that they are appealing only for those who are lost or who don’t feel they fit in with regular society. Around the world, terrorists find a ready supply of disciples in third-world ghettos and among the displaced. So, we can find a sense of belonging in family and community or we can find a sense of belonging with gangs or fanatical movements.
One of the sad things about gangs is they demand that the members follow a code or set of rules of behavior. Many gang members have to go against their values or beliefs in order to be part of the group. We’ve talked before on the online program about people who give up who they are—what they value and believe—in order to fit in with a group. This is a recipe for suffering. Of course, it tells us how important it is to find a sense of belonging. But it’s one of those sad things about people that we can be so desperate that we are willing to give up our identity to belong.
Another example of this is abusive relationships. When the fear of being alone is greater than the fear of abuse, many people stay in abusive relationships. We’ve seen over the years that many clients stay in relationships that are not healthy. They seem afraid of standing up and saying, ‘This isn’t working out’. And we’ve seen over the years that some clients have many relationships on the go at the same time. Their thinking seems to be, ‘If this one doesn’t work out, I always have another one ready to step in’. What this tells us is just how great the fear of being alone really is.
Tags: anterior cingulate cortex, Bruce Alexander, Eugene O'Neill, Irvin Yalom, Johari Window, loneliness, Relationships, Roy Baumeister, Viktor Frankl
Sunshine Coast Health Center is a provincially-approved drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility licensed by VCH