Episode 27(Part:4): Emotional Maturity in Recovery with Steven Crozier

In this episode, Steven Crozier shares insights from his 35+ years in recovery, exploring how addiction can be a transformative gift through personal growth, healing, and the power of community in 12-step programs.

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Hello world, and welcome to Choices Books and Gifts, where you always have choices. So, I have Steven Crozier. She is with us, and we've been doing it for a long time to Podcast episodes. And each one is about a different pamphlet that Steven wrote about the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they're fantastic.

But if it's your first time tuning in, I will read a little bit about Steven, but I highly suggest that you go back to the first one and work your way through these; it would be helpful. But this man is so good at this that you can start anywhere.

So, here's a little bio. Steven Crosier is an insightful author and speaker with over 35 years of experience in recovery. He has dedicated much of his life to helping others navigate the challenging journey of addiction to recovery. His work focuses on practical wisdom from personal experience and years of engaging with 12-step programs.

Steven authorises a series of influential pamphlets, including Its Selfish. The program, Amends Apologies., and The Myths of Forgiveness. The Gift of Addiction and Emotional Sobriety.

Through his writings, Steven emphasises the power of personal growth and emotions.

Healing, spiritual transformation and recovery, providing invaluable guidance for those seeking to find peace and purpose after addiction.

So, as I mentioned, this is our fourth episode, and the pamphlet we will be going over is emotional sobriety. What is it, and how do I get some? These can be purchased through the store choices in New York City or online at choicesgifts.com. They can also be purchased through regular Amazon and other social media and venues you normally purchase from.

And what we're going to do with Steven is we're going to jump into some questions for this gentleman to answer for us. And, like I said, he answers the most pertinent questions to our pamphlets. All right. Good afternoon, by the way. Good afternoon, Jay.

I apologise for not recognising you that way.

My first question is, what inspired you to write about emotional sobriety, and how do you define that?

I started in AA and eventually ended up in another 12-step. Program. SLA Sexual Love Addicts Anonymous. And that's currently my main program. And we have a preamble for that for all of our meetings, like, you know, like most of them do.

We also discussed the tools we used to work on the program with SLA. One of the tools that we list is using the 12-step program to achieve sexual and emotional sobriety. Now, because I'm in the form of sex, a lot of people with an addiction, it's like I understand what sexual sobriety means.

But I read the phrase emotional sobriety for years without ever thinking about why. Why.do we include that? Element is a factor in our recovery program. And it just got me thinking about the topic. So, what I often do when I want to think about something.

Yeah, I write about it. I researched and wrote about it, so that's how I came. How I came to write this, and how I came, how I come to define emotional sobriety. Well, let me. See if I can. So, the definition that I ultimately arrived at was emotional sobriety is the ability to. Self-regulate. Our responses to our emotions, a state of being where our ability to identify and observe and allow them. to move through us without hijacking our thoughts or actions, can be achieved regardless of the external circumstances or internal thoughts or beliefs.

So that's the definition that I ultimately arrived at. Great definition. Great. How does emotional sobriety differ from physical sobriety?

It's, you know, physical sobriety, depending on what the program is. You're in. But let's take AA or NA, you know, physics. Al sobriety as you're using or you're not using, you know, it's like I'm picking I pick up today or I don't pick up today.

That's why I define whether I'm, whether I'm sober, physically sober, sober in my addiction or not.

I think emotional sobriety is of a different quality. Sobriety in the sense that

You know, our emotions tend to be a sort of. Shifting landscape. You know, I mean, I write about this in the book, but the emotions aren't meant to be felt permanently. They're meant to, like, move through us. And we can experience several different emotional moods during the day.

So emotional sobriety differs from physical sobriety in that, it's, you know, for physical sobriety, we're either picking up or not picking up emotional sobriety. We are navigating a shifting landscape of emotions to respond to them appropriately and allow them to move through us in a way that means that any particular emotion or emotional state is not dominating us.

So, it's more. You know, physical sobriety is more of a light switch. I would say emotional sobriety is more of a balancing act. Just  okay. One way. Okay.

It sounds like you have to have emotional sobriety. And I wanted to stay sober on some level. Yeah, because you let your emotions get to it. Get the best of you.

I think we can get in trouble. No.

I agree with that. And I think.

I think that that, you know, We can stay sober, especially in early recovery. You know, if we do what we're told. And, you know, follow up, follow the rules and so forth. But if we want long-term sobriety, I think learning how to achieve a state of emotional sobriety is critical because eventually, if we're not paying attention to that, it's going.to push us to a point where using seems like the only option, you know?

Yeah, yeah. That was never true. But it can look true when our thinking isn't clear, and emotions and emotions can cloud that. In our thinking, if we're not emotional, So. Good. Got it. Why is emotional sobriety essential for long-term sobriety and recovery? It's funny because you, you know, told us all about that. So why don't we? I think we did. Go ahead, tell me.

Well, yeah, I mean, I can certainly expand on it.

You know, I think emotions and our inability to regulate them and our inability to respond to them in a healthy fashion or at the root of our addiction—you know, I think it's your lack of sobriety in our emotions that ultimately drives us to a point where we need to medicate. We need to escape. We need to do something to stop feeling how we're feeling.

On the flip side of that coin, if we want to maintain a state of mind and a state of being where it is, the complete futility of addiction is a solution.to our life problems, the state remains clear with us. We need to maintain a state of emotional sobriety to maintain clarity that we need to continue to build a recovery program from addiction.

It Sounds like emotional sobriety doesn't come immediately. It takes some time and some work.

I view it, and I think, well, I think a certain amount of emotional sobriety is necessary at every stage of our recovery. I think that is true. Emotional sobriety, like deep, long-lasting, is a late, later stage in the recovery process. First, we need to get sober; we need to stop the behaviour, develop the patterns, and develop the practices that allow us to, you know, not use them daily.

And then. When the fog begins to lift, we begin to detox. From just the substances that are in our system and the stinking thinking that's in our heads, then we're in a place where we can begin to address the underlying causes of the addiction, which I think are emotional. The mental or emotional landscape is a huge factor.

So, yeah, it's a later stage, the recovery frontier. And necessary for the longer term.

Sounds good, sounds good. What are some common? Signs? That someone is lacking emotional sobriety?

I think. The most telltale sign is if a person is stuck in a particular emotional state for an extended period, which will generally be less pleasant.

I wouldn't say I like the term negative emotions. I don't think our emotions are negative, but some are less comfortable. And others for most of us, you know? So if we're finding ourselves stuck in some of the less comfortable emotional states for an extended period, sadness, fear, anxiety, shame, those places,

That, I think, is a real red flag that our emotional sobriety is at risk.

Because, from my perspective, sensitive emotions are intended to be impermanent, transient, and move. Right. Through us. And if. we have lost the ability to regulate the flow of our emotions through us and they're becoming trapped in us and., you know, won't move, I think that's a good sign that our emotional sobriety is at risk.

I think another sign that our emotional sobriety may be at risk is if we find ourselves beset by a lot of high drama. Lives. To me, that is that. It can take a couple of forms. Either I can be the epicentre of the dramatic earthquakes in my life.

You know, I can just by my behaviour, by the way, that I'm talking. I can be riling people up and, you know, pushing people's buttons and all that stuff. Or I could then be at the Centre of a kind of network of high drama, like all my friends and my family's lives or, you know, constantly in up naval.

And I'm constantly having to respond to these, you know, high drama situations, which generally tend to generate high emotions, if that's kind of an ongoing feature of my life. I think I need to be serious. Sly consider whether I'm doing the work that I need to do to stay emotionally sober because it's pretty much. Impossible in a high-drama lifestyle.

Agreed. 100%. How can recovering people with an addiction cultivate emotional sobriety in their daily lives? Can they make that work for them?

Yeah, man. So I take two approaches to this in the book, like, and, and, I'll talk about the step work first. So. We can use the steps to create and maintain emotional sobriety; first, work, work them all. Work them in order. They're for a reason, and work them. Work them day to day. And I will start because I think it's a kind of later-stage recovery process. I'll start with the later stages. Steps six and seven. Where we work on our character defects.

Character defects are great generators of emotional and sobriety. You know, it's my it. Generally, my character defects are creating emotional imbalances in my life. So work this work. Steps six and seven, get. Your character de—facts out in front of you. And keep your eye on steps eight and nine. The whole amends process. Get rid of the baggage of your past.

Get rid of the clean-up wreckage of your past. Because that wreckage, whether it's wreckage that we've inflicted on one of the people or relatively inflicted on ourselves, carries an emotional weight to it. We're carrying around the emotional baggage of those circumstances until we do that work. We are carrying around shame.

We're carrying around guilt. We're carrying around sadness. Whether we acknowledge it or not, it is there. And the only way to. Shed that baggage is to do the work, do the work of making. Scan-able. for our behaviour through reaching out to the people we harmed, offering or amends to them, and. when we can, when we do that work, and we set that emotional baggage downward, that much more emotionally sober. Much more capable of maintaining that emotional sobriety on a day-to-day basis.

Step ten is that daily inventory.do that daily inventory. I made a list of suggested questions in the booklet. A ten-step daily inventory, and I included some stuff in there about checking in; your emotional state, you know, is checking in on whether I'm holding on to any emotions that I've been carrying with me through the day.

You know, just doing body, bodily, and emotional checks to see where I am emotionally and whether. I've allowed my emotions to move through me, steps 11 and 12, you know, seeking through prayer and meditation to find. The will of my higher power. It's in that contact with, with, a higher power that we find a way to release our emotions, to turn over the emotions that we may not know what to do with—you know, a God hand we don't have that.

We don't have to handle it all. Turn it over to our higher power. Let our higher power be our meditation. This is not that it's talked about in 12 steps, but it's as much as I would like to see it talk to you. Right. Because of that, I found it to be such a valuable practice.

Meditation creates a space to observe my emotions and actions and recognise that I am not in my emotional state. It's so easy when we're caught up in the window in the hurly early, in the whirlpool of our emotions. To think that I am my emotions, you know I am scared and sad; emotions are just emotions.

They're just data that come and go, you know, to tell us about things in our environment. Meditation has allowed me to create that space to observe my emotional state in the stillness, in the silence of my heart. It is much easier to maintain emotional sobriety when I'm not completely identified with my emotional state.

You know, and then. The 12 steps, the carrying, the message—you know, it's like, what a great way to maintain emotional sobriety, too. Achieve emotional equilibrium is to get outside of myself, you know, to give away what was given to me to keep paying it forward, stay connected with other people, and let that energetic process of carrying the message help the emotions. Move through me the way that they're intended to.

So I think the steps are a great way to. Maintain emotionally. Sobriety. Oh, steps are the way. Yeah, that's the answer. And I do agree meditation isn't spoken about. as much as I'd like. When we come in, get the basics, get sober, get a sponsor, get the whole group. And later on, and if there's nothing wrong with starting it immediately, either.

But meditation is a great form of spiritual growth. And understand yourself better; really sit quietly with yourself and see what you know and what comes back at you. I think it's so important. I was. Very lucky. I took transcendental meditation as a very young man. My brother introduced it to me.

It was suggested that you do it twice a day. I do it once a day. But it's. It's done every morning, along with prayers. So I'm a big advocate. Thank you for mentioning it.

Can you share some practical strategies for maintaining emotional balance during recovery?

So much happens.

Yeah. So there are several things that we can do that aren't. Directly related.

But that can reinforce the positive impacts—steps on our emotional equilibrium. We just talked about one of them, meditation. It seems like is, is, and mindfulness is trending these days. And here's what mindfulness can look like: a lot of things.

Meditation certainly is a mindfulness practice. But any practice that allows us to. Being the observer of our thoughts and our feelings, of the internal processes in our lives, I think, can serve to keep us, to keep us in emotional equilibrium, to keep us emotionally sober.

You know, I'm a believer in the value of therapy. You know, I, you know, I know that's not necessarily universally approved by everybody. Still, I have found it to be a fantastic tool for getting feedback and getting an outlet for my emotions in a way that helps me feel seen.

That helps me. It helps me be more observant of what's going on and more aware of the patterns and belief systems at work that generate emotional responses.

So, I think therapy is a very valuable tool for that. I've already spoken about the drama thing. But I think it's worth just touching on again.

Keep. an eye out for pockets of drama or patterns of drama in your life. And if. You see them more and feel them gaining traction, i.e., your day-to-day life, so stop and look at that.

Because that stuff doesn't happen coincidentally, you know, that stuff is, part of it may be an unconscious pattern, but it is an intentional pattern nevertheless, to sort. Of create a ruckus. Yeah. In which it's more difficult to maintain emotional sobriety and will then ultimately be more difficult to maintain sobriety as a whole.

Yep. Which, you know, seven Is? So, how does emotional sobriety help manage what we have? Every day. Triggers and cravings?

That's really what. I think emotional sobriety is the main benefit. Emotional sobriety. Because triggers.

Are going to trigger happen. They know it's a feature of life that circumstances beyond our control will come at us. They're going to generate responses, having a practice, having a program, a system of emotional sobriety in place. It prevents me from being tipped over by my emotions or emotional responses.

You know, instead of just going head over heels, you know, seized by my fear, seized by my anxiety, seized by my sadness, you know, I can go from an emotionally sober place, I can go, oh, I'm feeling full right now. I wonder what that's about. I wonder what data is bringing me. And what do I want?

What do I want to do about it? You know. Know what can I do about it? And if there's nothing I can do about it? Serenity prayer time. Then, I ask the Higher power for the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change if I can do something about them. Ask for the courage to do those things that change things. Change the things that I can't do, but nothing other than just spinning around in the emotional state, you know, and let it let the trigger, you know, send me into a tailspin. So that's how emotional sobriety, I think, can function.

You know, and I heard you say that the triggers and cravings can also be a gift because they can let us realise, okay, this is something that I need to find out why it's happening and how I can fix that.

I think that's just an imperative. Imperative. What role do emotions like fear and anger play? Or resentment plays in addiction. And. How can one address them?

So, I think they do play a role. I think they play a valuable role. And.  I can't remember. I don't know if I included it in the booklet, but it came up in conversation recently, and I'd love to pass it along here.

I had a mentor of mine, a former mentor of mine back then, 15 years ago, who ran a series of workshops on dealing with emotions, on confronting, you know, on confronting. Emotions and what he said stayed with me since in relationship to fear. And I think this applies to all emotions, but. This was particularly about fear.

He said fear is just a feeling in my body telling me something about my environment and man, which is a useful way to receive that emotional experience or any emotional experience. So, you ask about the role that these emotions play. The role is they are data. They are informative. That I can observe and then use to say, what's going on?

What do I need to respond? How do I need to respond to it in a way that's going to preserve my sobriety, that's going to preserve my integrity, that's going? To preserve my connection to a higher power? What's the appropriate response? You know, the thing that. You don't want to ignore it; treat it like it's bad and must disappear.

You know, all the things. That I used to do, you know, when I was in active addiction and that through my life, an active addiction, you know,

Suppressing it, ignoring it, trying to medicate it, anaesthetise it away. Those are all guys. Functional responses will ultimately carry a price we don't want to pay. Yeah. But treating their emotions as data, as information for me to evaluate, and then creating an action plan or turning over to my higher power if there's nothing to be done about it. That's the ticket to emotional surprise.

I so agree with you. All these things are fear, anger, and resentment. They don't have to be negative things. They could be things in your life. It could be information. And what do I do with that information? Earlier, we drank, used drugs, and did everything else. We can have those feelings and figure out how to get through them completely differently.

Figure out a healthy life over there in response to them. They're. Information. That's what they are.  How does someone develop self-awareness as a foundation for emotional sobriety?

You know, I think it starts with the steps. It starts with the search, the first moral inventory. Steps four and five move into our character defects inventory from six to seven.

You know that when we take the time to look back over our lives and begin to tease out the patterns, the thoughts, the belief systems, and the character defects, that's self-awareness, man. That's developing an awareness of how these things work in our lives and how they have worked in our lives.

Then, we can choose whether we want to continue to live and work in our lives that way or try something else. And so that's a good pattern of self-awareness.

Another way is to develop an open, vulnerable, transparent relationship with a sponsor.

I am having somebody. I can share everything with them and know that I will get honest, unconditional, loving feedback where I'm at.is a self-awareness tool for me. I think meditation is a self-awareness tool. And again, this is the ten St. ep inventory, as we were talking about earlier, that inventory at the end of every day where I go over, you know, how did the day go?

How did I deal with my emotions? Am I holding on to any emotions now? All of those. Things that can promote a level of awareness about my emotional state will serve as well.

Great. How does emotional sobriety affect relationships—family, friends, and the fellowship?

You know, it's just easier to be the kind of person I want to be and have the kind of relationships I want to have when I am not at the mercy of my emotions. At the mercy of other people's emotions. You know, I think emotional sobriety is an internal and external process, because other people have feelings, too.

And when I am in a place where I can be observant of my emotions and allow them to move through me without controlling my responses, then I'm. Then I'm freed up. I want to choose how I want to respond in a loving, caring, compassionate manner to the people around me. You know, close, close family or friends or even just people I'm encountering—you know, in my day-to-day life, I get to be a choice about how I want to respond to those people.

And I get to consider what the loving, appropriate response is. I'm not at the mercy of my thoughtless emotional response. So, there are triggers that are used to dictate—my behaviour.

Right, I used not to think or react. I love what you said above. But, you know, now I can think and react with sense, with awareness. I had no awareness, just terrific.

What advice would you give someone struggling to detach from situations that trigger stress emotionally?

I think maybe the first thing that I would ask the person is. You must be in a situation; you know, it's one of the things about being. Subject to triggers, being subject to emotional tidal waves. We lose the ability to consider dispassionately whether we need to be in that situation.

You know, because it's not always the case. Sometimes, we don't think clearly. And in our chaotic thought process, we think we have no choice but to be where we are. And that's often not true. You know? So, that's kind of a place to start. Yeah. And then I think of another, another step that can foster emotional sobriety,

It is, too. Encourage people to permit themselves to step back from a situation they find triggering or emotionally overwhelming.

You know, I know, I know this is true for me, and I've seen it true for other people. It was often the case when I found myself in triggering situations where I responded in ways I didn't necessarily want to. I thought I had to respond at that moment. And that's not that's, again, not always true.

You know, it's permissible to go, you know, timeout. I need to step back or take a walk. I need to step out of it—the room. I need to do it. I need to take a moment to, like, breathe and consider, you know, how I want to respond to the situation, not just respond without thinking from the emotional overwhelm.

Yeah, I like the way you said stop, think, and move out of that situation because sometimes I know that for me, a few of the times I didn't think I, you know, dealing with family, dealing with the job, dealing with so many things in life, I thought that I had to have that stress. But no, I don't need to have that stress.

I can take care of myself and set boundaries with my family, with my job, and with everything in life. What was something that helped me tremendously?

 

And. for a long time, I didn't think that; I thought I needed to have that stress. So that was just part of life. And it certainly is not.

And I think Jay, I think I talked about this a little bit in the book, like I think it's that it's possible to become habituated to certain emotional states, you know, because those emotional states create drugs in our body.

You know, we have we have. There are chemicals and hormones created by those emotional states. And I think it's possible to become addicted to them. The way we become addicted to external substances is as well.

So, people like rageaholics, people who are adrenaline junkies, you know, things like that. I think we become, like, chemically dependent on.

Absolutely. on the chemicals that those emotional states generate. For sure. Absolutely. For sure.

Okay, here's a good one. How do you help people in recovery avoid emotions? Relapse? Of while focusing on emotional help? So that relapse is a scary thing, and not only the drug and the alcohol, but, you know, emotional relapse.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think all of the tools we've been discussing throughout this conversation, we've been having, these tools of self-aware knowingness, can help us identify when we're slipping back into these emotional states. They are—traps for us.

One thing that I haven't mentioned so far that I think deserves to be mentioned, especially in light of this question, is to develop our ability to identify our emotional state.

And I think this may be something we guys are a little more prone to than women. As a rule, women seem more in touch with their emotions and feel more. More free to express them. You know, we're a little behind the curve in that area. However, recognising an emotional state is a good way to avoid getting it. They are trapped to avoid relapsing and returning to old thoughts and emotional patterns. And then, hand-in-hand with that is the ability to and the willingness to talk about how you're feeling when the feelings occur.

I often thought how I felt was at odds with the front that I wanted to present to people. The personality I had constructed. So I couldn't talk about those feelings, you know, because then you would think that I was cool or smart or, you know, John Wayne independent, strong or whatever, you know, so I've had to do the work of learning how not just to identify my feelings but talk about them, you know, and. in bringing those out into the light, they lose a lot of their power, you know. They lose the ability to sort of. To. Wrap us up and trap us.

So, I would say they are the twin tools of recognition. And then openness and vulnerability about it.

And you then asked for their help. You may need. It was finding out instead of staying. You know, it was so funny. It was once explained to me that it's like taking a small snowball and rolling it down a mountain.

If you let it roll, it's going to. It's an enormous thing at the end of the bottom. But if we stop it, get some help, and talk about it, it dissipates. And. That's what I've learned to do. I learned that a very valuable thing is to ask for help. I know that. That is. Wonderful. Whenever I'm in a situation above my, you know, thinking, I ask for help, and that's what works. How does emotional sobriety evolve as someone progresses? In their recovery journey?

So, yeah, like I said, I think it's something that develops later, later in recovery. We have a pattern of practices. And program perspective that allows us to stay sober, stay up on a day-to-day basis, and remain above our bottom lines. And then I think it comes down to an ongoing practice of working the steps. You know, we've already talked about kind of how six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, how those reinforce and grow emotional sobriety, and then some of these, some of these other things that I was talking about, you know, elimination of drama. And you get into therapy, maybe meditation practice. And then I think about it.

It becomes the way that our emotional sobriety gets anchored and developed even more firmly, held even more firmly, by taking it out of our recovery. Work out into our lives, out into our workplaces, out into our families, out into our day-to-day lives. Because now, you know, a trigger can happen at any moment. You know, we can get triggered walking down the street.

We can get triggered, you know, by getting coffee at Starbucks. It's any age. Yeah. And anywhere, use those tools when we're developing, you know.in ever-broadening circles in our lives until we're our whole life, which is a daily practice of emotional sobriety.

Yeah, I like that. I like that you mentioned earlier, and I am just now in therapy.

And listen, I know it's not for everybody, and it's unnecessary to stay sober and live a happy life, but I was a big advocate of it as well. I think it helped me along quickly. I also learned more about the issues through therapy. So I want to say I'm an advocate of it as well, though it's not necessary, but it helps.

Yeah. What are the most common obstacles to achieving emotional sobriety, and how can they be overcome?

So. I would say that the obstacles that present themselves most commonly are, again, back to drama. You know, if you're if you find. You are constantly swirling around in drama; you've created a drama that's being created. By the people around you, look at that part of, you know, what function that serves and why, why you might be encouraging that and fostering that in your life. And I think an unexamined life. You know, use the tools of self-awareness and self-examination.

We're subject to letting those things go by the wayside, you know, just because we think everything's fine. And, you know, I now, you know, we don't need to do all the things we did to get us to this point.

But I do not take the time daily, even hourly, to check. In with yourself and see how you do with seeing if you're hanging on to anything, seeing if there's anything that needs to be processed, or talking about it with another person. If we don't, we got the snowball you're talking about.

You know, if we're not examining those things and not holding them out for light, then it's rolling down the hill and getting bigger every time it rolls, you know? So, so. Yeah. Yeah. Check in. with you. Take that inventory, at the very least, daily. Is that just feeling, or.

Sometimes, it's just as simple as that—a simple statement early on in sobriety: hungry, angry, lonely and tired. You know, one of those things can set me off. And if I realise. Okay, let me also put it down. I haven't eaten today. Let me put a little something in my stomach. And it's it resolves so much of what was going through my head.

But, you know, once again, I want to thank you.

I want to thank you for. Coming on the show and for sharing with us. I do appreciate it. And I do think you're knowledgeable. Able man, and I hope people hear this and heal. So, to the world out there, I want to say, I want to thank you again.

There are four episodes if you want to start with a number. One, you can. Thank you very much for tuning in. We appreciate it. May God bless you. And look after you. Always have a wonderful day. Thank you so much, Jay.