Andrea Vitz https://andreavitz.com Emotional Sobriety Coaching and Training Thu, 08 Feb 2024 22:22:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://andreavitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-emotional-sobriety-icon-32x32.png Andrea Vitz https://andreavitz.com 32 32 A.A. and EMSO https://andreavitz.com/a-a-and-emso/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-a-and-emso Thu, 17 Feb 2022 20:37:10 +0000 https://andreavitz.com/?p=4837

Did the energy of Bill Wilson (founder of AA) work through me to create EMSO Training?

My motivation for writing the book, “The You You’ve Never Met,” was really inspired by my questioning… emotional sobriety, journal, the you you've never met, companion journal, book

  • Why are people who are seemingly deep in their recovery or sobriety still struggling with depression, anger, relapsing, or are still inevitably dying from addiction?
  • Why are the people who seem to have overcome their addictive habits—sex, gambling, food addiction, alcohol, drugs, and more—still actively immature, arguing every day, or behaving defensively or compulsively in other ways?
  • If sobriety is more than just being clean from drugs, alcohol, sugar, and other exogenous substances, how can we attain a state of REAL sobriety? 

All of these answers needed to be uncovered, I had never thought that this inquiry would end up being part of my profession, my passion, and my life purpose. 

Initially, during my own sobering up, emotionally speaking, I was studying the “Big Book,” which is the foundational A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) 12-Step book. Sobriety work was very clear in direction, but I felt there needed to be more action and application of the twelve steps. After I completed the 12-Step Process, I asked myself, what do I do now? I feel like I’m just getting started?” There had to be more. Even the founders of A.A. actually say that the Big Book’s message is “spiritual kindergarten.” 12-Step recovery programs specifically delineate that it’s not just a program to get you to an end goal of getting off of booze or drugs, it’s a program to get you to a place to begin healing.

In my experience with it, the Big Book is both a divinely inspired, full book, and it’s somewhat outdated in terms of its languaging and some of its practices. So I set out to write its follow-up (I know, not a simple task!). It wasn’t that I thought I could write a better book. It wasn’t that I thought I could do it more efficiently. The inner calling I received was that it needed to be continued, and I felt I had help throughout the whole process from another place in time.

The messages I received included…

  • This time in the world requires more of a how-to with the deeper investigation and a straightforward, no-nonsense, requirement of accountability.
  •  We need to be OK with looking at the hardest pieces of ourselves, and more objectively. Where we became offended or overwhelmed for being asked to look further, we would see it as our ego attempting to hold us in our insobriety. 
  • Perhaps the insobriety itself was the primary addiction, not the substance or behavior.

We need to be more brave and gritty than ever before and retain more desire for becoming new. We had to do much deeper work than traditional recovery programs asked of us.

 

It’s not enough to step away from our addiction. To really get free from our addiction we need to know the real reason for our addiction. More importantly, we need to become aware of and acknowledge that our REAL addiction is biochemical emotional addiction. In order to do this, we need more than a spiritual answer. Along with big “prayer,” we need to take more action. We must find the reason we have dependencies outside of ourselves for comfort, or behave in ways we don’t consciously choose, and remove that. These are the changes that I wanted to make to the concept of “recovery.” These are the things I encourage my students to do and what I really had to do for myself. 

When called to write the EMSO (Emotional Sobriety) Training curriculum, I wanted to convey the epiphanies that were seemingly being fed to me about the illusion of our dependencies being the problem. What work do we really need to do to complete the incomplete options we have for addicts in this culture to get sober? With all the remaining pain and depression I’ve witnessed within the recovery community, I’ve had enough of it. Have you? 

I’m not saying that our current rehab and 12-Step Programs don’t work for some people, because they do. Yet, it remains massively ignorant and neglectful to tell people they’ve “recovered” or become “sober,” when they’re still seemingly unable to handle their lives, which often leads to relapse or worse; or that something like alcoholism is their only problem and once they are free of that, they are free. There’s a huge component of overcoming our ego, our patterns, and our sicknesses of which our culture’s regular recovery programs only scratch the surface. For example, those alcoholics who shift their behaviors away from alcohol, without ridding themselves of the pain which made them reach in the first place.

There are a lucky few who get through a twelve-step process and go on to lead fulfilling lives. But what about those who, although refraining from substance abuse for years, continue to partake in other abuses—whether being on the receiving end of it, delivering abusive behavior onto others, or both? 

  • What about those who still behave like children in a relationship, harbor unspoken resentments, anger, and deep sadness?
  • What about the years of guilt, shame, and remorse they contain within the walls of their “recovered” hearts? These are the very same emotions that created the need to reach for substances in the first place.
  • What about the people who were severely harmed in some way, on their job, in the military, in a relationship, and they ended up taking drugs to support them? Or the person who was born into an alcoholic home, witnessing violence, or came from an environment of extreme pain? 
  • And what about those with more subtle insobriety, like passive-aggressive or dishonest behavior which causes disturbance in their lives and they don’t see their part in it? More importantly, they don’t see how their long-standing emotions create and sustain it!

Could we be dealing with an addiction and recovery framework that at the end of the day, maybe harmful to its members? Leading us to believe we are in fact “recovered.” Even the word recovery indicates we need to return to somewhere we once were, and none of us were in a place we’d like to return to. True evolution requires more than just a new language and a new program. It requires a much deeper dive into the moment by moment HOW! Leaving its people with a magnitude of skills and a new realization of who they REALLY are; to help them earn self-concepts showing them that they are powerful, and teach them how to better handle their lives moment by moment with earned self-confidence, self-trust, self-esteem, and even self-love. EMSO Training offers that to all people, including those in recovery. In other words, our new “recovery” path needs to be about the evolution of the human being. To evolve past the pull to remain the same even with “work” on ourselves. Without this vital evolutionary step, we will return to our everyday life and experience the familiar energy crisis which will pull us back to our norm when we haven’t changed our truest nature of irritability, restlessness, and discontent. We haven’t yet fulfilled the founders’ original vision of becoming truly happy, joyous, and free. 

It seemed as though Bill W. whispered these insights into my ears and onto my keyboard. I heard things like: “We have to work harder and longer to go deeper into real sobriety. We need better maturity that is unwavering. We need to remove the very mechanisms that create the negative emotions within us, which create these harmful behaviors.” I knew we had to train to dismantle the very beliefs that made the negative emotions that lead us down destructive paths. 

When the emotions aren’t produced it leads to clarity—where someone will suddenly know how to handle everything in their life. This leads to true peace throughout each area of life. In order for us to uncover all of our insobriety and train to strengthen ourselves, we have to work harder, longer, and more intentionally. Some may say that my curriculum asks more of them than they’ve ever been asked before. This is because I teach people to become ultra heightened aware of their beliefs, behaviors, and emotions.

While those I knew who long struggled with drugs or alcohol seemed to sometimes be able to stay away from their vice for a period of time, they would inevitably relapse. A personal friend of mine would begin drinking again after the 1.5 years mark. He religiously worked the 12-Step program, even hosting meetings at his home, yet there was something still sitting within him, still eating at him, and some aspect of himself that he wasn’t looking at, his depression, which ultimately took his life. The burdens he carried deep inside would inevitably compel him to seek the one thing that always seemed to change his state: Alcohol. 

It became clear that his not having access to what was really hurting him allowed for remaining darkness within him. Because of this he wanted to be somewhere else, or do something that made him feel different. His story of “recovery” is one of my greatest motivators for this curriculum. After his death, as I was reading the 12-Step book he relied upon so much, I thought, what if he’d had an additional book? What if he’d had different love and support? What if he’d had family and friends who were all the same in commitment to their own Emotional Sobriety? If we had each spoken the same language, would we have easily noticed his pain? Know his struggles? And more importantly, know HOW to help him? 

My mission is to help others get to the point where they aren’t seeking anything external anymore. To release their story of dependency. To allow them to know that they can demand that they no longer linger in depression or anger. They don’t have the need to seek something that’s going to take them away from their current emotional state, because they’re going to want to remain in their current emotional state! They’re going to be proud to be who they are and happy with who they are.

I want EMSO for everybody! Not just for those in alcoholics anonymous. Not just another step. I want them to have a better answer, not just another answer; where they can say “It’s okay if I apply myself to this, and when I really get this I’m going to be a different person. If I’m a different person, I cannot have the same problems from which I want to escape.” It requires diligent practice and skill-building to achieve sobriety and become a fully healthy person with impactful mindfulness, good experiences, and joy in their day-to-day life.

This is the true promise of EMSO Training: Levelheadedness, clarity, and peace. 

Before writing the book The You You’ve Never Met I had not studied any other writing from Bill W. So when I was complete with the development of the EMSO Training curriculum, I read this excerpt from Bill W, and was blown away at his consideration that maturity was what was missing. That our emotions were the one problem. He states, 

“I think that many oldsters who have put our AA  ‘booze cure’ to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God…..Since AA began, I’ve taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover, finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round…..how to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living.” Bill Wilson on Emotional Sobriety

Many since have attempted to find an answer to his realization, that Emotional Sobriety is the next frontier in work for recovery. I have seen EMSO Training be the answer to these declarations from Bill Wilson. The group of people in the EMSO Community who are also in recovery absolutely love EMSO suggesting that EMSO Training is what was missing from their sobriety. I am humbled to consider the same channel Bill Wilson was tapped into, I have been allowed to tap into. Let us translate the right mental conviction into the right emotional result. 

Humbly,
Andrea Vitz, DC

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What is Emotional Sobriety? https://andreavitz.com/what-is-emotional-sobriety-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-emotional-sobriety-2 Mon, 12 Jul 2021 17:54:16 +0000 https://andreavitz.com/?p=3170

Did you know Sobriety is not just for the drug addict or alcoholic? 

It’s for all of us. 

I want to reframe the term Sobriety. In my experience, it is not about getting treatment for addiction, it is about using our mindfulness and will to learn how we really discover who we have really been, observing our emotional status along with our mental and physical health. It is the uncovering and practice of being a new version of ourselves that is self-reliant, emotionally stable, mentally clear. To remove the reasons we may drink, smoke, have affairs, are dishonest, jealous, afraid, etc. Emotional Sobriety is a state of overall clarity, to be able to master levelheadedness, and feel peace. It’s mature, poised, healthy, and heart-centered living. It grants the opportunity to feel through things in a more comprehensive and healthy way.

  • Emotional Sobriety Training (EMSO) can of course assist in recovery from drugs and alcohol, as well as help people in their life with the painful emotions which may cause mental health issues. These feelings of anger, shame, fear, etc. come from believing that we are inadequate, unimportant, trickable, etc. These beliefs and emotions lead us to use behaviors of survival, which are compulsive reactions to our past trauma. This leads us to maintain an Intoxicated Identity. The “Mr. Hyde” phenomenon. 
  • We know that emotions are chemicals and we can become addicted to making these chemicals in our bodies. These are biochemicals. Can our Emotional Insobriety, therefore, be our primary problem? Dependance on the emotions we have been making since childhood? Biochemical addiction that followed us up to this day? And the compulsion of our ego’s will to maintain them. Are we being puppeted by past false beliefs about ourselves which allow these chemicals to be readily made? Can we see that the reason we turn into someone we don’t recognize and don’t intend on becoming, is a reaction to our past trauma? It’s why we become Mr. Hyde—lie, defend, argue, fight, steal, drink, use drugs, etc. 
  • Even those of us who never even took a drink or tried drugs are not necessarily healthy. We still become jealous, belligerent, manipulative; we are not levelheaded, clear, or peaceful in the majority of our lives. When we realize our pain is our reason for the intoxication, our substance abuse was not the problem after all. And addiction recovery is not the final solution. 
  • Programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation may be essential programs to help an alcohol problem, creating physical sobriety or getting clean, yet getting truly sober requires a person to take a better and whole assessment and repair of their human existence. Looking at the real reason for Mr. Hyde making an appearance in the first place. What we feel precedes it. Up until now, we have not had as thorough a curriculum to call you out of your comfort zone and ask more of you to really save yourself and get sober once and for all. To take your recovery into your own hands, to remove the negative emotions, to go from “dry drunk” to truly “happy, joyous and free”, to take long-term addiction and finally find that you were the remedy all along. To not get stuck in spiritual pride or sobriety programs, but learn regulating feelings, perspective-shifting, and self-responsibility over all things in your life, allowing you to achieve emotional sobriety giving you complete control of your emotional climate
  • Bill W. of A.A. said perhaps the 12 steps wouldn’t be enough.

“Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance…prove to be an impossible way of life… still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round…”

  • This is why EMSO Training was developed (as I believe, Bill would have wanted it) requiring real maturity, honesty, and work.

“How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy, and good living… I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand.”

As CEO of Leveheaded Doc, I have lost people that I love to relapse. I know that Emotional Sobriety is what they were missing and they did not have the help it offers in all of their relationships (long or short-term) that could spark their negative feelings. I believe working this EMSO curriculum into their life would have saved their life. Not just keeping them clean and in a recovery program, but feeling content and control of their lives. Additionally, people not in recovery or a 12-Step program continue to struggle in their ability to maintain strong emotional and habitual control. I have witnessed the majority of the people around me not knowing how to really seek help for their negative and often hidden feelings of despair, hysteria, fear, and erratic behaviors of dishonesty, gossip, jealousy, etc. Sure, they are not drug addicts, but they could not control their compulsions and that sounds the same to me as any other addict. 

I theorize that all physical addictions like substance abuse, (alcohol, drugs, etc) are born of false self-beliefs, biochemical addiction, discontent, hopelessness, codependency, and insecurity due to emotional insobriety. Can we unravel these false beliefs about ourselves via a completely new rehab experience? Can we utilize a different kind of support to alter our self-esteem, unearth our lies and truly attain EMSO? 

Ingrid Mathieu, author of Recovering Spirituality – Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice said 

Integrating the fullness of the human condition into one’s spiritual practice is what leads to emotional sobriety.”  

In an article in Psychology Today, she warns not to fall into the trap of Spiritual bypass of what I would call “emotional chaos” while in a 12 step program. 

“…involves bolstering our defenses rather than our humility. Bypass involves grasping rather than gratitude, arriving rather than being, avoiding rather than accepting.” 

I’d ask, how about overcoming your emotional chaos completely? So that the previous things you have struggled with are never an issue for you again, and you no longer make the same chemical of anger, fear, or embarrassment around the same areas of your life. EMSO Training is not a “program.” We are not going to lean on spiritual bypass, mere Emotional Intelligence, abstinence, or stuffing emotions down. In my book, The You ‘ve Never Met, you won’t find yourself in another program. You instead find a comprehensive guide on how to not simply outsmart your negative emotions, but overcome your predisposition to creating them for survival. Therefore, taking you from a person with an addiction to a person who takes action and from suffering to mindfulness & sobriety. When we attain true sobriety we overcome addiction, become levelheaded, clear, and full of peace, without therapy or focusing all of our time and will on an A.A. or N.A program. We don’t only focus on a program or anonymous treatment because we aren’t all drug addicts or alcoholics. We arent all sex addicts or gamblers. We aren’t all behaving in the same ways. Yet we are all the same. We have all suffered, and for this reason, we are not anonymous. We are not ashamed of our past, or our behaviors. We flaunt our failures day-to-day because we have come so far from them. We are Emotional Sobriety pioneers. We are humble, mature, and ready for life this time. With EMSO we become new people, the people we were meant to be…not the people trauma made us become. We are called at this time to sober up, emotionally speaking. 

Dr. Andrea Vitz,
EMSO Training

Bibliography: 

The Next Frontier : Emotional Sobriety by Bill Wilson Copyright © AA Grapevine, Inc, January 1958
Andrea Vitz : The You You’ve Never Met – How to Overcome Pain and Chaos in all of Your Relationships by Sobering Up, Emotionally Speaking.
Ingrid Mathieu : Recovering Spirituality – Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice
Psychology Today – Ingrid Mathieu  : What Is Emotional Sobriety? Hint: It doesn’t necessarily equal “happy, joyous, and free.” 

Written by: Dr. Andrea Vitz, DC
May 2021

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What do I think of “The Five Love Languages”? https://andreavitz.com/what-do-i-think-of-the-five-love-languages/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-do-i-think-of-the-five-love-languages Wed, 18 Nov 2020 05:21:10 +0000 https://andreavitz.com/?p=1683 Q: “I was listening to a coaching about the 5 love languages and while I’ve read that book years ago, after reading your book I now see a lot of what is discussed as coming from a place of lack. How does your work integrate with the 5 love languages? In what way can the love languages work against what we’re trying to obtain with our partner?”

 

AMany years ago, I thought the “The Five Love Languages” was an excellent tool for someone to understand what makes their partner feel more loved and important to them. 

My love languages were words of affirmation and quality time. I wouldn’t have wanted you to buy me an expensive gift. In fact, it would have made me quite uncomfortable to receive it. 

I didn’t believe I was beautiful or worthy, and I needed someone to tell me otherwise. I feared that if all time was not spent with me I’d lose the person I was with to someone else who was more worthy, attractive, etc. I spent so much time trying to get their attention, I didn’t even pay attention. 

Fast forward to today… more emotionally sober and with a completely different perspective, I recognize where those wishes came from. And you are right to notice that they came from a place of lack. 

“The Five Love Languages” is a well-written book and triggers self-inquiry, yet it isn’t a solution for our feeling unloved or unimportant. It is the temporary filling of our deficits or appeasement of our pain. 

This appeasing may seem to be the secret for peace-keeping in our partnerships, yet it is enabling our insobriety, attempting to reduce our feelings of lack and ignoring our personal responsibility to meet our own needs. 

This sustains unhealthy relationships by enabling unhealthy individuals. 

We can use “The Five Love Languages” to discover our love languages, and by doing so reveal what we believe is lacking in us! We can define what we think we need in order to uncover what we can improve within ourselves. 

If I need these things I can then ask myself, “Why? What are my Trauma-Influenced Self-Beliefs and Trauma Filters? How are these specifically ruling the unhealthy cycle of my romantic relationships?”

Finding and using only our love language is a bandaid. A next hit of Oxytocin—a chemical that we crave to feel something good in ourselves, about ourselves. It provides a sense of bonding. It alleviates our self-beliefs, but only momentarily, granting us relief from our thoughts that we aren’t good enough, we aren’t attractive, we aren’t important, etc. 

Even with the use of our love language, the negative self-belief remains. The biochemical addiction remains. The feelings of chronic resentment, frustration, and shame remains. The Emotionally-Triggered Behaviors (ETBs) of jealousy, judgmentalism, childishness, and manipulation remain. And we will keep using the same tool to correct the same problem. To fill the same hole, that is unfillable, using these tools. 

This is why the effect of the gift only lasts a short time. And they have to buy more and more things. The hug only sustains your good mood for a moment and you have to keep reaching. And the compliment only keeps you “happy” for a while, keeping you attached to your phone for the next bit of attention. The quality time is never quality enough or long enough. The demonstration is never big enough and the message on the card may never be romantic enough… to make you permanently believe in your lovability. 

And your good feelings won’t last long. The belief of lack within us is perpetuated, and we inevitably push our partners away, or end up filling them with shame by constantly rejecting their efforts or asking them to walk on “eggshells!”

There is nothing wrong or bad about wanting this “loved” feeling. It feels “good.” But to use this language as a tool to make your partner feel loved isn’t the best gift you can offer them. The best gift in my opinion, is to help them realize how lovable and whole they are even without your love. 

Then once we are healthy, we can love each other using all of these languages. We can douse each other in the words, service, gifts, touch, etc. I still enjoy words of affirmation and quality time but it ADDS to my life, it doesn’t complete me

In short, we can understand what our love language is so we can feel loved when our partner uses the language, but we can never know we are loved by using this. One is temporary and conditional, the other is permanent and unconditional.

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