Step 7: Being Humble

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So let's keep it in that light. All right. Have a good time. Learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional. Some very simple words to live by. We humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Give rid of this arrogance. That's what I'm asking him to do in step seven, in the 12-step process. Get rid of my shortcomings. What does that really mean? Well, that means you're going to not be so arrogant all the time. Not arrogant? Arrogant, you say? You call me arrogant?

Yeah, I'm calling you arrogant because you're an addict. got to get rid of that. So let's do that. Arrogance is the greatest tool that addiction uses to get you engaged in protecting it from extinction. In other words, it's got you using a make you continue to be an addict. In that last episode that I did with the interview of my friend Paul Mozo, we talked about that and being humble.

And that's a guy who, if you listen to the episode, he really is now full of humility and is very humble because he lost everything in the process of really engaging and protecting in his addiction. So when we ask for humility today, What we're doing is we're opening ourselves up to the reality that we're going to live without arrogance. So we really have to define what humility is because people think that humility is synonymous with humiliation, which it is not.

So in order to become humble, you have to be accepting of things, but you have to be able to surrender some things. And I used that term when I was talking to my friend Paul.

We talked about what it means to be humble and and it's such a strange thing because you walk around it's an addict i know i did but just full of of uh arrogance and it's very uh it's very offensive to people who are encountering you even if they love you because they can't stand how arrogant you become a regular thing to hear from family members is that the person is impossible to talk to they won't engage they seem irrational and crazy and erratic and they're gaslighting you and they're second

guessing you and then they're exploding and attacking you. And then they come to you with these little puppy dog eyes saying, please, you know, I'm sorry, help me. And then they reject it immediately. Right? So this is, this is what addiction does is it traps you with arrogance as a tool. They hand you this tool. Uh, really it's a weapon, right? And so it hands you this weapon to then come after you, uh, See, that's the irony of the whole thing.

It's handing you a weapon knowing you're going to use it on yourself. You think you're using it against other people, but you're not. You're not damaging other people with your arrogance. You're hurting yourself. And so the great confounding and confusing situation where arrogance steps in and starts driving people away, right? It pushes people away. That hurts you. as the addict. It doesn't hurt them. They're confused and upset, but you're the one that's getting damaged.

And so arrogance is the greatest, single, most effective weapon that addiction can use to crush and destroy your world and then kill you. And so how do we get rid of that arrogance? Well, we engage a very simple thing called humility, being humble.

And it's really kind of interesting and strange and bizarre that somebody would come in Seek out somebody who has specialized training, years of experience, can actually apply that experience through the use of techniques that they've learned over years, knowledge and experience of treating people. And they come in and then they start attacking them. It's so strange. Like, why would you go see somebody and say, can you help me? And then start attacking the person that's helping you.

It's like in the scenario or the metaphor that I use all the time with lifeguarding, right? You're in the water, you're drowning. I swim out to get you. And then you start punching me and yelling at me and telling me how horrible I am because I swam out there to help you and you don't need help. There's a great commercial for some, I don't know, some online counseling program.

uh, company and they've got a guy sitting, he's laying on a, uh, a bench, a weight bench, and he's doing, um, bench presses and he, and he's got the bar and he's done one and he's done two. And then now the thing is stuck on his chest. Some guy comes over and says, Hey, do you need some help? And he says, no. Are you sure? Yeah. I don't want to bother you. You know, my, uh, I don't want, you know, maybe my family or my friends will come by at some point. He's like, really?

You look like you need some help. No, I'm good, man. And then the guy offering the help walks away. And then the guy with the weight on his chest, he's just stuck with the weight on his chest because he can't do it himself. And that's the whole premise of that commercial. It's very, very clever and completely accurate that that's how it works, right?

So when you start working on recovery and you've gotten to the point where you're at step seven, seven eight nine ten eleven twelve right you're about half well a little more than halfway through but you're being asked to do something that's going to be so incredibly hard and it's preparing you for going out and making amends in step nine like fix your stuff right but you can't do that if you're full of arrogance and so the the last thing that really leaves you in in recovery is arrogance and it

does have a way of creeping back in but it is the last thing that leaves and Because it's the fully automatic machine gun that you're using to mow everybody down, right? So it's just kind of a strange thing that that's the tool that gets used, right? The most destructive. It's kind of like when you're playing a video game. You know, everybody always wants the most... Effective weapon when they're shooting, you know, the enemies, the little spaceship aliens or whatever.

They want the biggest, you know, and that's the prize you get, right? You play the game long enough and you get these special weapons. You get cheat codes online so you can get those special weapons early and be able to defeat everybody. Well, that's what addiction has handed you, my friend, in your addiction to protect itself from extinguishing the addiction. Humility. Humbleness. Maybe it might help if you actually had some definitions of those words. So let's look at some definitions.

I'm reading here from alcohol.org. It's a great website. One definition is to be not proud or arrogant, modest. This example of humility is a lesson learned early in life. And it can be, but it obviously doesn't stay if you're an addict, right? So how do you to be, what was it again? Not proud or arrogant, but modest. I need help.

Now, remember that when we talk about addiction, we talk about trauma because I am a firm believer that if you have addiction, it's because you are coping with major trauma and perhaps you've never actually worked on that trauma, never been offered the help to work on that trauma, maybe have been closed off. to getting help. Maybe you didn't want to recognize that you were traumatized. Trauma can be a stigmatizing word just like addiction can.

And so if you're a trauma victim, thank you mass media for making that word useless to us. I'm a victim. Uh, it's triggering me. I'm sorry. Somebody looking at you funny is not triggering you. Um, Sorry, this is not the same as being molested as a child or beaten. That's traumatizing. So we have overused that word trauma, I think, to the point where it is basically useless. But it is stigmatizing. And many of my clients that come to me and I start throwing out the word trauma.

They immediately reject it. They feel like they're not traumatized. And I shouldn't say that because that is stigmatizing to them. And it takes me a while to convince them that there's a different use of that word that means something else. And it perhaps does apply to you, the person sitting in the chair across from me. Maybe it does actually apply to you because guess what? You were traumatized.

So As I'm working with clients and I'm trying to help them, that is one of the major obstacles is getting them to understand what trauma is and that perhaps they actually were traumatized because they experienced something that was horrible in their life and they were young and there was nothing they could do about it. But they've normalized that experience and the whole thing and they've kind of swept it under the rug.

So if you are traumatized, it's going to be very difficult for you to overcome trauma. being arrogant because you feel like nobody understands. So if nobody understands, then nobody's going to get it and you're not going to talk about it and that's the end of that. And that's what addiction does is it convinces you that nobody's listening to you, nobody cares, it doesn't matter. Well, the reality is people do actually care.

And then when they do want to tell you that they care, you can't push them away and try to convince them that they're actually, they don't know what they're talking about. So, to go back to the originating theme of today. If you are an addict, you were more likely than not. And in my opinion, you absolutely have been traumatized and you need to work on that trauma because that is going to be the thing that sets you free. So humility.

And humbleness means that you can say, I need help and I'm accepting help. I need to be able to talk to somebody about my problems and I'm willing to actually be fully present in the presence of another person and share that. As I have said, probably in every single episode I've done on these podcasts over the years, that Arrogance is the great shield, and it controls everybody around you. It gives you all those tools you need.

So the gaslighting, the chaos-engaging behaviors, the distractions, the deceptions, the lying, that's really all arrogance. So there are habits attached to being arrogant. Not listening is one of those. I refuse to listen to what you're saying. I refuse to listen to you tell me that... I am hurting. It's really, it's kind of an odd one because they're not saying, I'm not telling you that I was, you know, I wasn't hurt. They'll say, yeah, that was painful at the time, but this is now.

I don't want to talk about it. You need to talk about it. You need to be fully engaged in that. That's what being humble is. Engaging in reality. So if you are going to be lit, if you're going to have these things lifted and you say, please, please remove these shortcomings, please remove these shortcomings from me. You have to be willing to let them go.

So we come to the whole thing with step four and you're doing that fearless search of moral inventory and then step five where you're actually saying it out loud and nature and extent of those character defects and letting someone to bear witness to it. And then you're preparing yourself in step six to have them removed. But as my previous guests have said, the time where you actually engage in that humility and being humble is a very telling thing because when you...

When you're trying to be humble, but you can't, you haven't quite gotten there yet, have you? Right? So when you're being transitioned from what could be considered natural pride to modest pride or arrogant pride, arrogant pride is Who's proud of being an addict? Nobody, right? But it's so weird because they can come across as they got it going on. And addicts, as I have said to you also in the past, addicts are very charming, charismatic people.

That is how they are successful at being addicts, right? They're charming. Some of the most charming people I have run into, honestly, in my lifetime have been people who are just full-blown addicts. They suck you in with liking them. They're the life of the party. That's the stereotype, right? The person that comes and they're the life of the party when they're drinking. And oh boy, are they great to be around. That's what we like.

We like to invite those people to parties because they are the life of the party. But they're also tragically the most screwed up, messed up addicts. And so pride... and arrogance can show up in like really odd ways with addicts. It's when you start trying to pin them down into moving towards recovery that, that the, uh, that the arrogance turns nasty.

And that's really the word that, um, kind of describes what, if, when you've experienced this with an addict is they, they get really nasty and they start coming after you. Um, and when you're trying to help them, cause it's this weird push and pull, right? They, they, You want help, but you don't want help. And you're looking for an answer, but the answer is to change what you're doing. You don't want to do that either.

So it's incredibly difficult to kind of get through and navigate as an addict and virtually impossible as a loved one. So in your addiction, when you're turning yourself over, it's the surrender that and the laying down of arms and the arms being the arrogance, right? That's the tool, right? So you're actually asking to have the strength to put your weapon down, but it has to be replaced with something else.

And that's why when you're trying to work through these steps, it's a regular occurrence in my experience. My experience tells me that you can put the weapon down, but you're going to pick it right back up if the problem is not, solved in some other way. The problem being, I feel uncomfortable. So what you you've got to do is you got to have something else to replace that weapon with something that's effective, but it's not damaging. Right. And so that's the relationship.

That's the back and forth relationship between you and a peer, you and a, um, a sponsor, a sponsee, no sponsor. Sorry. You're the sponsee, you and a sponsor, you and a counselor, right? a trusted relationship where you can safely explore those things that make you feel so incredibly uncomfortable and want to use, because that is it, right? I mean, we feel uncomfortable, so we use.

So if you do not have that other thing that's going to protect you and help you in those times when you feel uncomfortable and you have not worked through the problems, I wish I could just into somebody's head who's an addict. It's like, please understand that what happened to you is not okay. It hurts you. That's why you drink or use drugs or food or sex or the internet or pornography. It doesn't matter what it is. That's why you're using it because you're hurting.

So you got to let somebody in to help you through that pain. Best way to do that is to be humble. Be humble. So as we ask to have the shortcomings removed from me, and I'm going to engage in humility to get there. Here's the other thing that is really a misunderstanding of what it means to be humble. Sometimes people think that humility or being humble is a sign of weakness. And certainly being arrogant seems like a strong thing to be, right? I'm arrogant. It's tough.

No, arrogance is not strength. It's actually weakness. What you're doing, especially if you're around your peers who are in recovery, when you are experiencing and demonstrating arrogance, it's hostility. It's aggression. It's not helpful as a person. It's actually showing that you can't handle things well. You explode. You're argumentative. You're attacking people. And the people around you are looking at you going, what is your problem, man? Why are you why?

I'm just asking you if you, you know, to stop this or to change this or to accept this from me. And, you know, your arrogance has got you attacking them. They're looking at you thinking you're crazy. They're not looking at you like, oh, he's really a strong individual. He's really handling his life well. That's why he's screaming and yelling. Right. And that's really not what's going on in their minds.

I'm sure you could probably try to convince yourself that you're showing an incredible amount of strength, but you're not. So being humble is actually very, very difficult to do as you will find in your recovery that you're having difficulty with being humble. And you'll see that you'll feel first like you're very vulnerable, but actually you're actually much stronger. Why? Why are you stronger? Well, because you actually are establishing a level of control.

And that control is very confidence building. So the more control you have because you're engaging in humility and being humble, you're receiving things. You're actually gaining things in your life. That gives you strength. So when you are experiencing fear, being humble, you're becoming stronger. When I, uh, I've been training to fight all my life, right. And, and I've certainly engaged in a lot of fights when I was younger.

Um, and, and sadly, even as an adult, um, I'll tell you something when I was learning, uh, in an organized way, how to fight rather than just on the street fighting, when I was learning how to fight, And I had teachers that would teach me how to fight, right? Because I would experience training in martial arts and Wing Chun and Eskrima and Muay Thai most recently and Western style boxing. I would actually listen to somebody.

And it's really funny because what they do is they teach you to be humble through force. So they're teaching you something. They're way better at that skill than you are. And they've never, they don't, push that on you. You don't start punching somebody or kicking somebody, you know, full force with tactics that they can't defend themselves if they're learning. So you as a student, you're standing there learning and they're teaching you and they're showing you and they're trying to help you.

And when you make a mistake and you keep repeating it, these old school guys, they will start to show you like, this is why you don't do this. Bam. And they hit you, right? Or you get all cocky. And you think you know how to do it now. So you're going to like start, you know, and they can take you down a peg real quick. Right. Um, somebody who's really skilled at martial arts and, and I am, and I've taught people and it's, uh, it's what happens is you, you know, Oh, okay.

So you think you're ready for that? Okay, fine. Well, here's, I'm going to show you why you're not. And they knock you down a couple of pegs immediately, um, through some moves, some technique, um, You know, they armbar you in some way that you didn't even think was possible or they break through your defense that you just learned because it's like this new toy and boom, they take you down. I do that with my students when I would teach them and it's very effective, right?

And keeps them humble because you want them to learn. And they close their mind if they think they know more than you do. So you teach them and you teach them and they think they've got it. And then, you know, okay, well, here's why you don't have it. Because you want them to go, oh, I still have more to learn. Right. And and anybody listens to like the Adam Carolla, Dr. Drew podcast, you hear Adam talk about that all the time. Expertise comes with a lot of learning.

You learn what everybody else does and you master what they're doing before you throw your own spin on it. You want to you want to say that you have an understanding of how to do it. Learn how everybody else does it first. Then put your spin on it because that's being humble. Right. So strength, strength comes from humility, not arrogance. Arrogance is weakness. It's not strength. So from, from the press, um, the perspective of recovery, listen to me carefully. Okay. It's very serious.

Now I'm going to stop laughing. Listen to me very carefully. If you really want to get sober, ask for guidance and strength in humility, not in arrogance. So if you're going to pray, you're going to pray to have that arrogance, that arrogance lifted from you. That's step seven. It's replace arrogance with being humble. You will be a much stronger person if you do that. I promise you. So as Paul Mozo learned in that last episode, he talked about that.

He just is grateful when he gets up every day and he says, I'm grateful that I have been able to experience the humility to be able to get through today. And I pray for that. And those are, those are really wise words coming from somebody who has 30 years of addiction going for him in one year of recovery. And I guess that's the advantage of being 50 and, and in recovery. Well, that's it for this episode of Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard.

I hope, I really hope that these words are inspiring you to move towards recovery and reach out for help in your recovery because I'm here to tell you being sane, stable, and sober is so much better than being chaotic and arrogant and out of control and addicted. So, if you need help, you can reach out to me. I can give you some guidance and And you can also reach out to somebody locally if you're in a different country. There are recovery places and processes in place everywhere for you.

You just have to reach out for it. So I want to thank you for listening to Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard, and I'll catch you on the next episode.