The Need for Personal Autonomy
Nobody enjoys being forced to do what they do not want to do, and such force rarely leads to the intended outcome. In the context of addiction recovery, there are cases where involuntary rehabilitation is effective in preserving life, but it is not a fix-all for those whose lives have been damaged by a pathological attachment to substances and harmful behaviours.
Addiction is a mindset and the recovery mindset progresses through six stages:
- Pre-contemplation
- Contemplation
- Preparation
- Action
- Maintenance
- Long-Term Wellness
Pre-contemplation is the default mode, where reliance on the behaviour of choice is seen as a satisfactory, even a necessary life support. In this mindset there is no contemplation of the costs incurred when engaging in the behaviour. A contemplative mindset invites a cost-benefit analysis of everyday events and builds on a yearning to escape the negative effects of the addiction and regain a sense of personal autonomy.
It takes a sense of possibility to move from the contemplation stage into the preparation stage. The individual needs to decide (unilaterally) that the costs of their habit are outweighed by the benefits of loosening the grip it has on their lives. Preparation involves building commitment, establishing supportive relationships/strategies and accumulating the psychological resources that are necessary to succeed.
Action is a cycle of reduction/abstinence, relapse and reaffirmation. Relapse is hard to avoid and certainly not an indication of failure. Our habits are our teachers, and we learn how to beat them through their sly attempts to evade our defenses. An effective action cycle will result in progressively longer periods between relapses until stability and long-term wellness are achieved.
Recovery Coaching is not therapy
The relationship a client has with a therapist, clinical counsellor or psychiatrist is a power-over relationship. These are authority figures who dispatch advice for the client to act on. This is a reasonable expectation as their years of training and professional experience make them the most capable advisors in the field. Psychiatrists have the most power and possess the legal authority to prescribe drugs and impose periods of residential rehabilitation, if they deem it necessary.
The client-coach relationship, in contrast, is a power-with or peer relationship based on the concept of personal resourcefulness. The client is seen as a keeper of their own individualized solutions, and it is the coach’s job to help them discover those solutions. Recovery coaches may also be trained at the graduate or post-graduate level, but they respect the client’s self-knowledge and internal resources, rather than their own education, as the source of that person’s truth.
Unless the client requests advice, recovery coaches do not tell their clients what to do, they provide a map and a vehicle, and the client plans the route. The word coach itself comes from a Hungarian word meaning a large horse-drawn carriage, designed to move passengers from point A to point B. A recovery coach is a vehicle that transports those in recovery from the contemplation phase to long—term wellness.
A client of mine once complained about repeated interactions with his doctor that took the form:
Client: Doc, I need this to help in my recovery.
Doctor: No you don’t, you need this.
It is not that the doctor’s advice was bad, but it was wholly ineffective for my client who needed to be heard rather than ignored, and consequently never followed his doctor’s orders. This is the dynamic that recovery coaching was created to address.
Recovery is about becoming, rather than abstaining
The Buddha once said—“We are what we think. All that we are flows from our thoughts”, and this is where science provides insight into the journey of the recovering addict. Habitual behaviours are brought into being through the establishment of new neural circuits and the dismantling of the old. It’s all about neural plasticity, our brain’s ability to create new and powerful connections based on what we do and think.
Addiction is a complex habit that damages parts of the brain that help us overcome bad habits. In addiction we lack some of the tools other people have at their disposal when asserting control over their own behaviour. The addiction is a rewiring of the brain that makes us different people from our past non-addicted selves.
Addiction recovery is acting on a decision to become the person we want to be. This is hard because it involves another neurological rewiring process, and that takes time. Recovery involves the sowing and fertilizing of new seeds and taking care of them as they grow into beautiful new plants. A recovery coach helps the client choose which seeds to plant and in which locations to place them. This is done, for the most part, by asking questions rather than giving advice, which means it is the client, rather than the coach, that directs the journey from contemplation to the long-term wellness of the person they are becoming.
Like a garden, which requires watering and maintenance, this new person requires ongoing support, but what a peaceful and rewarding experience it is to sit back and celebrate what has been nurtured into being.
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