Conformity: Social Influence Or A Spiritual Malady? Sermon by Metropolitan Demetrius

I do not necessarily have to react to my feelings of negativity about myself, someone else does not need to experience the consequence of my resentments. As I would have had a resentment, it would have had a wolf pack of negative emotions attached. Either way, if he could perhaps of had the ability to say this is how exactly I am feeling he could have acted on this emotional information rather than reacted to it. Desiring stuff seems at the root of my fear based stuff – the exquisite torture of desire which soon loses it’s so-called relish and just becomes torturous.

• My dismissiveness and my arrogance are parts of defence mechanism against rejection, they guard my inherent sense of shame.
• …….I am working the 12 step again with the Guidance of BBA.com Group.
• I must be God centered instead of self centered and God directed rather than self directed .
• The great psychiatrist Carl Jung called this a ‘low level thirst for wholeness – for union with God’.
• If we practice virtues instead of defects then the brain changes for the better and we recover quicker.

Alcoholics do not seem want stuff like normal folk, but have a pathological wanting, an all consuming need to get stuff regardless of it’s worth or value. I am assailed externally by fear of what other’s think about me and internally about what I think of me – when these two line up it can have a powerful and damaging effect on my psyche. I have found over the last decade in recovery that when I turn my Will over to the care of the God of my understanding that I am restored to sanity spiritual malady definition and my thoughts are sound, they are on a higher plane as the Big Book tells me. I have seen in myself how fear and shame seem to drive most of my maladaptive behaviour. Some of us have this knawing feeling of not being good enough, have a hole in the soul which we are/were kinda always unconsciously trying to protect, shield from the world. Some of us are “people pleasers”, some of us are dismissive towards others. I can be a dismissive person more than a people pleaser.

Filling the Hole: Fixing the Spiritual Malady

First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade.

For some, it may manifest as a feeling of being disconnected from others or as a sense of emptiness. For others, it may manifest as anger, anxiety, or depression. Unlike normal people alcoholics are unsettled to the core. After reading ‘The Doctor’s Opinion,’ ‘Bill’s Story,’ and ‘There is a Solution,’ in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous,we came to an understanding that we have no control whatsoever over alcohol or drugs. I’ve struggled with a consistent practice of steps with now 19 yrs of sobriety. I was reading last night in I Peter about living in a way that my prayers are not be hindered. And the book by Chuck C , A New Pair of Glasses, defining the SM as a feeling of consciously separated from God.

Recovery is a Journey

We drink and set off the craving and the cycle of addiction starts all over again. People like us are obsessed with the thought of controlling and enjoying our drugs or alcohol. The biggest problem is that our mind buys the lie that the next time it will be different. The reason we cannot just quit is that our mind constantly has us believe that we can control and enjoy our drinking. No matter what the consequences were in the past, our mind will be obsessed with the thought of drinking. Basically, the alcoholic, once they start they cannot control the amount they take.

“The principles of the programme of Alcoholics Anonymous are scientific and closely follow all the helping therapies which lead people to emotional well-being. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ My affective disorder via various neural and cognitive – affective mechanisms leads to chronic substance use and dependency of these substances.

The Mind is also Abnormal

Alcoholics had become a compulsive disorder to relief distress not to induce pleasure. For me this section is saying our emotion dysregulation leads to feelings of being “restless, irritable and discontented” which prompt a return to drinking. But when it comes to alcohol and drugs, there is no will power. The reason is that our reaction to alcohol and drugs is physical, it’s not mental.