Your Greatest Weakness Is.........?

to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for it is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help if you actually need real help and you're in need of help please seek that out if you're in dire need of help you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them but don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help it's not it's just a podcast it's for

entertainment and information only 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 so In order to get into recovery, you have to be willing to give something up. And so the thing that you've got to give up is the thing that probably you want to hang on to, which is, I don't know, self-esteem, ability to tell people what to do, control your life, right? All those things are very kind of egocentric.

And so the thing that you have to give up is is the ability to hang on to those things that you arrogantly are hanging on to because you think that you're right. So the idea of I've got to give something up and yet I don't know what it is. And so the idea of recovery hinges on your ability to humbly have these things lifted from you. That's step seven, right? So I'm going to humbly ask that these things be lifted from me. But what are these things?

You've gone through step one through step six, and you think you understand if you're doing the step process. And if you're not doing the step process, then you think that you get it because you've been working on recovery for a while, and you get the reasons you think why you're using and getting high, and you feel so angry and frustrated about everything, right? So you think you get it. So it should be fairly simple, right? But yet it's not.

So the idea of I've got to give something up in order to achieve true sobriety rather than just a constant abstinence that I'm hanging on to barely and maybe having a slip here and there, that's the issue. It's like, what are you actually surrendering? You must have these things lifted from you. So I humbly ask to have these character flaws, these things lifted from me. And yet... you still go out and you use. Because when tough times happen, when things go wrong, you succumb.

And that's the frustration. That's what we're going to explore today is the idea that I want to do something different. I want to get sober. And yet, you know, like as men, we want something to do. We want tools that we can use, a hammer, a screwdriver, a saw. But yet it's still, it's something that you can't use a tool for necessarily. It comes from inside, deep inside, the surrender of your stuff. So what is surrendering? What does that mean?

You know, I've said to many, many of my clients, your greatest weakness is your ability to surrender. It is the inability to surrender that is your greatest weakness. And so that inability to surrender causes you to not be free. Because if you actually surrendered in the process of recovery, what you're surrendering is your pride and your ego and your arrogance. And if you think about it, when you're an addict... you act in very destructive ways.

And so it would seem that it would be easy for you to target those things to give up. But they are also the things that, you know, remember addiction hands you arrogance as the primary weapon. It's like a Scottish sword. It's this giant sword that just can destroy anything. And so the idea of like, I'm going to surrender, seeming that that's, That's a weakness, right? And I don't want to be weak because that makes me fragile. So surrendering would be the opposite of what you would want to do.

And yet it's the very thing you need to do. I was watching a... To use that sword analogy, I was watching a YouTube video. They make these things called firewood chopping swords. And they're these big giant swords that you can use to chop wood. And they work really well because they're huge. They're massive pieces of steel that when you bring them down on a log, it splits it like an ax. It's really, it's fascinating.

We think that, you know, an ax is the way to go, but the ax is a small piece of metal on the end of a long stick and a firewood cutting sword. It's all metal. The whole thing is metal. It's a big, giant broadsword. And that's kind of the thing I have in my head when I think about arrogance. Arrogance is like that. Normal arrogance maybe is like an axe. It takes a lot of work. It's not necessarily efficient.

But boy, if you have addiction-related arrogance, it's much like that firewood chopping sword. It's like three feet long and solid steel and probably weighs about 25, 35 pounds. It does a lot of damage, that arrogance. And so the idea of surrendering arrogance You know, the 12 steps, for example, the whole concept of it was based on a Christian concept and idea of surrendering over to God, right?

And so many of the faiths have that, where you surrender over to God, And it's a time when you really are kind of down on your knees looking for answers for things when you're really struggling. And for people who have addiction, that's what it's like for us. We get down on our knees. We really get brought down hard when we get to the point where we're asking to be saved. And there are many...

Many demonstrations of that, that you can see, um, if you just get on YouTube, for example, and you, you go like, there's a great website called I am second.com and it's, uh, they have these things called the white chair videos and they are, there are videos. It's a Christian website, but it's, it's, um, You know, it's about faith and it's about turning yourself over to God.

But they talk about addiction and trauma and abuse and abandonment and lying and stealing and all the horrible things that people do. And this is their first person testimony of them surrendering over to have these things lifted from them. One of my I have several favorites. Annie Lobert is one. Lindsay Snyder, the woman who is the the owner of In-N-Out Burger. Brian Welch, Brian Head Welch, the guitar player from Korn.

Awesome and moving and yet disturbing videos of their testimony, of their sadness and their sorrow as they get caught up in their addiction. Annie Loverts, her video in particular is one that really, it's just gut-wrenching how far she got and how lost she was and how much she actually got to the point of death. And she did... essentially die and then come back.

She has devoted her entire life to getting women out of the sex trade, and she goes out and tries to save them from the thing that tried to kill her, her addiction and her sex abuse and prostitution. Brian Welch and his story of salvation from just the horrible existence he had with methamphetamine and use of that drug and getting to the point where you're just feeling totally broken. And that's what's on those videos. And they're very, very moving, very stark, jarring kind of videos to watch.

And I highly recommend that you take a look at that website if you do not know of it. It's iamsecond.com. And if you put in there addiction, you'll see those videos. But there are 150 of those videos on there of varying types. So if you're a person who has been affected by a broken marriage or you were a kid who is affected by divorced parents or you have tragedy in your life, death, death of a parent, death of a child, death, death, and the brokenness that we feel and the way to move on.

You know, pass that and get through that and be healed from that. Well, the enemy wants you, you know, and the enemy just opens doors for you and waits for you to to find those those things that are weaknesses. And for people who have addiction, the weakness is is the the the discomfort, right? you know? Feeling uncomfortable drives people to their addiction. It really does, because who wants to feel uncomfortable?

And when you can't tolerate discomfort, because you live with discomfort in a way, especially if you're growing up, you learn to live with discomfort, sort of. You adapt, but it doesn't mean you're comfortable with it. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. And so when you get to that point in your life where you are feeling horribly uncomfortable and you can't take that. You would just want to shed that, right?

So the arrogance that you feel that you think is protecting you is actually protecting you from recovery. Like it's keeping you from recovery. It's protecting that, that good healing that goes on. So you have to surrender to your recovery just like, and as powerfully as you surrendered to to your addiction.

And if you really look in your soul and you look down deep inside and you realize there was a time when you just like, you gave up, like you knew you were kind of fighting your addiction for a while. And you, you were thinking that you were, you had it going on and you handled it. And, and most people are not, not everybody, but most people who suffer from substance use disorder, they get to a point where it's like, ah, this is me. This is what I'm doing.

And I've, unfortunately for me as, as a clinician, I have witnessed that in my presence where I see people and they are literally looking at the crossroad of going left or right there in that crossroad. They they've got that, that, that fork in the road and they can go one way or the other.

And I, I've, I've been able to bear witness to them deciding I'm going headlong into addiction right now that's where I'm going and it's a very sad thing for me to see because I feel like the enemy has gotten a hold of them and he's gotten his hands in their soul and he's going to take them down and and a lot of times those are the people that end up dying and I go to their funerals and it's sad for me because I've been working so hard to try to get them to a place where they can be healed and

they just surrender to it. And I, and it's a weird thing to see, you know, it's really a strange thing because they just literally, you can see it like they just, they transform right in front of you into a very dark place. There was a young lady that I worked with one time who she worked in the sex trade. She was a sex cam girl. She was doing work in her home using a video camera.

camera and uh you know people would pay to see her perform various acts in front of the camera and she was also a heroin addict and i saw you know we i worked with her for you know a few months trying to get her to move away from that life and that lifestyle and To, to, to surrender to recovery. You know, it was right there. And she spoke about wanting it. She spoke about, you know, wanting to make that transformation. And she also saw the evils of it.

And she, she could tell in a very intelligent way, tell me about it and talk to me about it, which she did. And yet she came in one day and I'll never forget it. She came in one day and she said, you know, I've just decided I'm actually gonna just go ahead and just I'm going to be an addict. I'm going to go ahead and just, I'm not going to try to get into recovery. And I'm just going to, and she had it all planned out. She had thought about it. It's the strangest thing.

She came in to report it to me. She specifically came in to tell me that's what she was going to do, that she was not going to continue working on recovery, and that she had decided she was going to just continue doing the sex cam work, and she was going to just be high all the time, and it was fine. And I looked at her and her face actually changed as she was saying it. And she was telling the story from the perspective of this is what I've decided to do and I'm going to do it.

And it puzzled me as to why she would come in to announce that to me. And I don't know if it was because she was looking for me to accept her decision and grant permission or approval of that, or if it was meant to have me work on trying to get her to not do that. And I did. And she left. And I remember thinking when she left, because I could see, man, she had surrendered to the enemy. She was all in. And I had a very uncomfortable feeling when she left.

It was like the air got pulled out of my office when she left. I just didn't know what to do. And I had to leave my office for an hour or two to kind of process what had just happened. And what I had seen is I'd seen the enemy attacking her soul and taking it captive and burying her.

literally burying her and i do not know what happened to her after that that was years ago i don't know um i i would hope that she somehow gotten help you know or changed her mind or gotten out of that but i fear that she in fact actually probably is not with us any longer i don't know but it was a very sad day for me because i felt like i had lost one battle um to the enemy So when you see people that are looking for a way out and they're looking for that transformation, they're looking for

something different, they're looking for a healing, you can see it in their eyes and their face and their mannerisms and their affect. But also you can see people who they're walking the walk, they're talking the talk, but they're not really feeling it. And so the surrender part of it is the part that's missing in those people. They feel damaged. They feel like they're not whole and they don't know how they can ever be whole. So they just say, okay, well, I'm not going to do this.

And so what they're doing is they're announcing, I'm going to abstain until I can no longer abstain. And if you are one of those people, you do not have to live that way. But the idea of surrendering, I'm going to surrender and I'm going to be humble enough in my mistakes and my flaw. I'm gonna be humble with my flaw. Humble meaning I am actually an addict.

And it's something, the only way I can really adequately describe it is it's something that instead of words that come from your brain and come out your mouth, they're words that come from your heart and they float up to your mouth. And the idea of I'm surrendering over my weakness. I'm admitting I'm weak. I'm frail. I'm broken. I need help. And so if you can turn to that brokenness and acknowledge it in a way. I mean, if you're a Christian, that's what God wants you to do, right?

He wants you to admit and to feel that admission because you, you need to be healed and you can't. And it's funny because just like me, I sit in a chair and I wait, I patiently wait for people to, to come to that place. And I don't try to force them to, and I'll challenge them and I'll, you know, I, I challenge and I'm, I'm pointed and I'm a direct and I don't, I don't, you know, soften the message. It's just honesty. It's pure honesty, right? Because I'm trying to get them to be honest.

So if you're trying to feel that honesty within you, it is complete and it is an absolute, like it's unconditional. I am flawed. And I, I need help. I am flawed and I'm not making the right decisions. I am flawed and I do not know what to do. And, and you know, in the, to go back to the, like the white chair videos, Brian Welch, he talks about that.

And it's funny because he, and I'm not, I'm, I don't want to ruin it for you if you haven't seen it, but he talks about like, just take this from me. Just, he's talking to God. He's gotten to the point where he's on his knees.

This, this man who has money and women and cars and drugs and, and anything he wants, um, fame he's got it all and yet he has nothing like he has just nothing and he's he's saying that he's like if I I don't like I can see my own destruction and that's kind of what he was saying is I see my own destruction so take this from me look in my heart see what's in my heart and take take this drug from me and that's the wrong that's the wrong message like take this from me you know what how about like

open your heart and and surrender to the idea that you are helpless instead of take this from me, meaning I'm hanging on to it for dear life, right? I'm going to hang on to this addiction. I'm going to hang on to this drug. You can't, you know, try to take it from me. Just go ahead and try. And I got the sense when I watched that video the first few times, it was like, wow, man, he's challenging God to take something from him. Like he's going to hang on to it.

So he's going to show that he's stronger than God, or he can, he can wrestle with God to keep on, you know, keep his drug. And, and he ended up just doing more lines of, of math. And he's, you know, it's like he's puzzled. Well, this is the problem. Like, you know, anybody who's been that way where they have these addictions and they can't stop. They just can't stop. You can't stop because you don't want to. It's not, you know, it's like I don't want to stop.

So to think that somehow you can have something lifted from you that you are not interested in stopping is just ridiculous, right? So surrendering is something that is not an action step, as guys would want it to be, right? We want the action step. It's not an action step. It's a feeling, and it's an openness. So we think of surrender as like, oh, I've got to give something up. That's not the surrender.

The surrender is the openness and the authenticity of your understanding of your mistakes, of your fallacy, of your flaw. The action steps come after that, and that's part of the problem. Addicts, we want it now, we want it immediately, and we want all of it. And that's not what recovery is. Let me say that again. That's not what recovery is. It's not about right now. It's not all of it right now.

What it is is a letting go of something over time and struggling with the concept of I have to surrender to the idea that I'm flawed. And so for many people who suffer from abuse, surrendering is the last thing you want to do. Because you're strong and powerful people and you've overcome this horrible abuse in your life. Or you're in the process of overcoming that horrible abuse. Or some of you are still in the abuse, right? But you're strong. Addicts are very strong people.

They're the strongest people I've ever met. They are determined. They are strong. They are very capable, unfortunately. The enemy's got them doing things in a very negative way, right? So strength in destruction. I'm the strongest destroyer of anybody. And so they're not weak. You are not weak if you're an addict. You're very, very strong and very capable. You are the tornado that just blew into town. I forget the rating. Is it category five? Is that hurricanes or tornadoes? I don't know.

coming into town and literally blowing everything apart. That's how strong you are. You're capable of doing that. But yet, the surrender seems like weakness. So I'm going to end this description with what I started with. Your biggest weakness is your inability to surrender. You cannot fix what you do not know or will not admit. is a problem, is a flaw. You can't fix what you won't acknowledge as being wrong.

And so the idea that I am this, and it's, you know, from a Christian perspective is, you know, I'm born again, right? I'm turning myself over to change, right? I wanna feel love. I wanna feel attachment. I wanna feel the lightness. I wanna feel different. I wanna feel better. And you can't do that if you keep walking around saying to yourself, I don't have an issue. It's not a problem. I don't have a problem. You can't tell me what to do.

Or like Brian at that moment when he's on his knees with a straw in his hand that he's going to jam up his nose and snort up a bunch of crystal meth. And he's like, just look in my heart, God, and take this from me. That's a challenge to God, right? That's not what... That's not what you're supposed to be doing. So when people come into my office and they say, okay, give me the answer or tell me what I'm supposed to do. Well, no, I can't and I won't.

Even if I did, I won't because me telling you what to do is me working your recovery. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna teach you, but if you're an unwilling student because you're not surrendering over to the idea that everything is all messed up in your life and you need to change, What good is it going to do for me to tell you how to fix that if you're not admitting that it's a problem? So your biggest weakness is your inability to surrender.

Once you surrender, you now take a position of incredible strength, and then your life will change. So do yourself a favor. Surrender to your recovery. You surrendered to your addiction. Now surrender to your recovery. Listen to people, follow instructions, do what they tell you to do because they are the experts because they are in recovery. So I hope that helps you on your path to recovery. And I hope you have enjoyed listening to this podcast. If you have, please spread the word.

These podcasts are done weekly or intended to be done weekly. And if you need help, you can reach out to me at any time. I'm available through my website, ballspringmindbody.com and see if we can get you the help that you need. Don't suffer in silence and Please, don't end your life trying to protect your addiction. Surrender over to your recovery and admit your problems. And you'll get there. Trust me, you will get there. And life is so much better when you're sane, stable, and sober.

So until next time, I hope that you have a sober day today. See ya.