Why the Acceptance of Powerlessness is So Important to Successful Recovery

Timothy D. Stein, MFT, CSAT

December 18, 2012

Let’s talk about powerlessness.  In recovery from sex addiction, one of the pieces that people early in recovery tend to struggle with is the idea of powerlessness.  Most of us don’t like the idea that we are powerless; we interpret powerlessness to mean we are weak, incompetent, or cannot have any control over the direction of our life or our recovery.  Therefore, there is often a knee jerk reaction to push away from the idea of powerlessness suggested by the 12-steps.

In recovery, powerlessness does not mean any of those things.  When we are talking about recovery, what powerlessness truly means is “I cannot do this alone.”  When you are figuring out what recovery means, this message of powerlessness is something that you have to hang onto.  When someone starts the process of recovery, they have most likely previously tried to stop their addictive behaviors and been unsuccessful.  Sometimes they have stopped them temporarily (weeks, months, years) but have eventually gone back to those addictive behaviors.  Addicts will say with plenty of conviction that they are done with their addictive behavior and will never do it again only to end up back in a behavioral cycle that leads them right back into that very behavior.  Addicts will unconsciously walk right back into their addiction, often by the choices they are unintentionally making, because they haven’t accepted the truth.  “I can’t do this on my own. I make bad choices. I am overwhelmed in the moment with an addictive urge or desire.”  When an addict actually starts to get successful recovery going, they almost always have done that with connection to other people.

So powerlessness simply means, “I can’t do this alone.”  This is why in recovery we talk about making phone calls.  We talk about opening yourself up to your higher power.  We talk about being transparent about your thoughts and actions.  All of that is about connecting with other people.  The effectiveness of therapy groups and 12 step groups is based on the idea of powerlessness.  It can be summed up as follows:  “I need other people to support me and, oftentimes, guide me in what’s going on.  None of this means I am weak.  None of this means that I am incompetent.  None of this means that I do not actually have some control over the direction of my recovery.  It simply means I cannot do this alone.”   Embrace the idea of powerlessness and ask for help because you simply can’t do successful recovery alone but you can do it with support.