The Recovery Sessions 4: Emotionally Sober for Life
Emotional sobriety is a phrase often heard in the rooms of recovery, yet it is not a concept easily explained even if it is something to which many aspire. It first appeared in The Next Frontier in an article written by Bill Wilson in 1957 when he was struggling to move through a severe depression. In short, he found that many emotional challenges stemmed from “dependence - almost absolute dependence - on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like.”
Bill proposed we use the twelve steps to wean us from those frightening dependencies.
In Season Two of the Recovery Sessions, Roger N. walked us through his experience with these ideas as a part of what he proposed as a progressive approach to Step Two and restoration to sanity over longer-term recovery.
"I had always thought the emotional sobriety Bill described in his article was the result of managing my emotions, keeping myself in an appropriate range of feelings. Behaving. Now I see that’s crazy. Emotions aren’t manageable, and they aren’t reasonable, they are indications of things happening inside me. And they need attention.”
Because of an increasing interest in the idea of emotional sobriety, it became a substantive part of the book, Progressive Recovery Through the Twelve Steps: Emotionally Sober for Life. And it became clear it was time for people in long-term or progressive recovery to tell their stories about emotional sobriety through Season 4 of The Recovery Sessions.