I believe a mark of a healthy mind and spirit (in other words sobriety) is the capacity and ability to hold at the same time at least two, if not more, truths. Even seemingly opposite or opposed truths. In doing so, it is not, repeat not, holding everything in a lukewarm way. In fact, it means increasing clarity about one’s inner and outer world. It is holding more dearly and deeply to what the philosophers and theologians as well as scientists have, in their own different responses, framed as “the really Real.”
In recovery talk, it is distinguishing between the "insanity" that shaped how we used to see ourselves and our situations and other people in our orbit, and the saner way we do now with more balance, restraint, and sustained focus. Sobriety cultivates the really Real frame of mind. It in turn feeds sobriety.
Many of the marks of sobriety are the means and the ends of this truth about the nature of Truth: Humility, Generosity, Balance, Patience, Service. They help us become sober, and once sober we now embody them. But remember that even each of these marks are only possible if not taken to an extreme, in which case they can be lost or turned into their opposite. In other words, they have shadow sides which are also real and when used appropriately are useful in contributing to making them what they are. Without their shadows, they can't be sustained. Too much humility and it becomes about us; too much generosity and our resources are lost; too much balance and we can't move or risk, etc.
We might think of the mutual relationship of these virtues with their necessary shadows as being not like enemies of one another but rather like "the loyal opposition," something in political language like Abraham Lincoln's "team of rivals" in his cabinet. Each differing but helping one another to be better, so that together they can become something even greater. Or as in various psychological models, it is like how different roles a person plays or identifies with can be incorporated into becoming a greater whole and healing person, more self-defined for the purpose of being better with others.
These marks of sobriety are the spokes on the wheel of daily life that help us move forward into recovered, renewed, reclaimed, repaired, rehabilitated lives. The energy that powers the spoke, or the main hub, is that same “greater power” or “higher power” we speak of, one that seems to come to each in our own understanding, as the Steps say. But to me one “connecting rod” for all the different understandings of this Power for recovery is just this: whatever recovery lens is used, we will come to know what is real. It is like that contemporary proverbial “red pill” from the Matrix movies, admittedly a metaphor that can and has been used in harmful ways, but one that serves as a way to see how our default way of knowing reality can be changed, how it needs to change if we are to truly grow.
We will be able to now choose the really real and to internally stand against what our too-fragile ego, our old acting out self-medicating self, tries to get us to see is black and white, either or, one way or another. We know when we are in this state of mind that we are likely to go to extremes in how we see ourselves and others and the world and our circumstances around us. This “blinds” us. It ironically keeps us from the very experience often witnessed to by those who are in fact physically blind who learn to truly “see” more of the world than others, what is hidden to those of us whose functioning eyes limit our minds by occupying us both with what we think we’ve seen before and with the “sparkly new things” drawing our attention. The really real goes unnoticed.
I have been reminded of all of this as I have been learning to struggle with remorse. Remorse in recovery, and remorse and recovery are on my mind. Because remorse is always, to some extent, on my mind.
Remorse is deep, deep guilt and regret. Guilt and regret merge into something more than either of them. It is seasoned, depending on the person, by shame, anger directed inward, fear and anxiety. The past is stuck. The etymology of remorse is “to bite again.” One’s past continues to bite and hurt one’s present life. We are now biting ourselves or allowing ourselves to be bitten again and again by our consciousness of wronging, hurting, others.
We want ourselves and others to feel remorse in order to grow a more ethical community. We often say we have little compassion for the remorseless. We try to figure out and parse out how much remorse one truly has. We want to see it in others and yet don’t want it to be “performative.” We may wrestle with those dynamics ourselves when we are steeped in remorse.
I find that feelings of remorse, like grief that goes unprocessed, can go from being a wave that breaks around me, lifting me up and moving me a little where I stand along the ocean of feelings, even coming in over my head for a moment, to becoming the tsunami as it becomes the ocean itself. When it is a wave, it can remind me, as a wave does, of where I am and who I am, of my finite being and the power of life to pull me under, of how the world I am in can hold dangers for me unseen beneath the waters. And when I feel like I am the exceptional being who could swim across the ocean uninterrupted, powered by my own strength and will, a strong wave keeps me near a swim buddy and the sight of land.
So remorse can be just like guilt, grief, fear, anger, and the “prosocial shame” that is a boon to my recovery when it reinforces my boundaries, my sense of reality, and awareness of others.
When it becomes overwhelming and stays, like that tsunami that rises the ocean level above me until I can no longer see the sunlight above, it can turn into desires to hurt myself, sabotage my recovery, become self-pity, reinforce feelings of inadequacy, my not-enoughness, which fuels self-indulgence, all which throws wide open the door of relapse.
And beware that such a door now might also not look like the door to past addictive acting out but still be equally destructive to self and others. Beware of addiction transfer.
Remorse, then, like the other hard feelings, carries the seeds within it of selfishness. I feel
remorseful so much that I also begin to worry—or feel resentment over—the fact that others
don’t know and can’t see how remorseful I am. (There is an inherent bit of that dynamic in my writing this post even. Hence the need for anonymity. Self-awareness demands that acknowledgment). That can be a human flaw if owned up to, but it can also, if unchecked, feed that destructive need for the validation of others, that urge to control the emotions of others, to over-extend myself and my feelings, to just be another way the false stunted ego tries to put me at the center of my relationships.
So I carry remorse with me wherever I go, and I fight back the pressures from within myself and society to make it be the totality of who I am now, one in recovery who has been changed (and importantly that is not just me talking) and still changing due in part to that very carrying of remorse with me. This, however, is why I have noticed people early in recovery, as I did then, will long for the time, a single day we might say, when we aren’t feeling full of remorse. A time we aren’t kicking ourselves, we might say, not self-flagellating.
That specific kind of extreme language is heart-felt but it is also a red flag that the addict self is still engaged, trying to keep its foothold in our consciousness. Feeling an extreme pressure of the feelings themselves, such as the deeper remorse that comes from being reminded by others of our past actions, and especially feeling the weight in early recovery that comes from feeling emotions that used to be blocked, we will tend to react in extreme ways too and to use the “always/never” words because they reflect the extremes of our thinking. We also deflect to the actions of others: when will they stop feeling the way they do? Don’t they see how remorseful we are? When will they stop piling on and making our remorse worse?
First, all of that is just another thing in the world beyond our control. Second, the answer is
probably never. Was the impact of our actions like a hand held rock thrown into the ocean of another’s life, or a side of a cliff crashing down, or a powerful earthquake in the deeps, or even an object from space vaporizing waters as it collides with an earth sea? The one hurt gets to choose their metaphor. But rippling effects carry on far into the future. Third, this is why we work on abstaining from acting-in as well as acting-out, and focus ultimately on the recovery self, leaving remorse along with other hard emotions in a lesser position in our lives.
This is why I also fight back against the pressure to play the martyr, to try to make sure that
everyone else can see the “scarlet letter” R for Remorse I wear. This temptation can come especially, it seems, when I am smiling and “forgetting myself,” which seems to not so strangely happen most often when I am out with others or by myself having a fun and relaxing time and living in and out of my “outer circle” of healthy life in recovery. That's when I begin to feel guilty for doing so.
It is then good to be reminded that waves of remorse and the other painful feelings aren’t the only kind of waves in the ocean around me. Contentment can wash over me as well. I am more than one truth I hold about myself. I can express contentment as well, without needless concern of what others might feel. And also I can be concerned for others’ sake, if they come upon me enjoying myself and they do cringe, especially if they last saw me or thought of me back at the time of my arrest and in its wake and were in circles I once belonged.
Holding all this simultaneously is possible the deeper in recovery I go, and it allows me to hold open a door myself, of myself, to any who are curious, to any who are in need, to any with something to share of themselves.
Finally, I am grateful for those who have taught me these truths out of their own lives, be it other felons or addicts suffering remorse due to various actions, or especially from those who have grieved deeply and learned not to be consumed by it and to enjoy life in the face of their grief, and from those suffering from “moral injury”-shadowed remorse. If remorse is literally about "biting," "eating up," "consuming," then I don't want to let it consume me (as I once let my addiction do), but instead I want to be the one now biting into it, as I have with this post, "consuming it" for what it can teach me.
Truth is big enough to hold, and even require, complexities. We can be blessed to live in these complexities one day at a time.
Grace:
"Remorse light" may be what friends and family experience as they gradually know more and understand deeper what happened with their loved one. The traumas, the predilections the just plain bad luck and yes "bad decisions" that led to addiction, depression, incarceration, and/or strained relationships gradually become clear.
If you inadvertently (or not so inadvertently) caused some of their trauma you will have remorse for those actions but even simple every day actions will look different in the light of more knowledge. I might suddenly recall a conversation from decades ago, put it in context of what I know now, and wish I had said or done things differently. Remorse. But what I did then made sense in the context of what I knew, and Re was responsible for keeping his own secrets. I can easily release that momentary remorse. Then, another memory, another if only, and another release. If you have remorse light, release it. You didnt know. When you know better you do better. If you now realize you created trauma where none was intended, keep learning. If you are still creating trauma, get help to change your behavior.
It is ok if you want frequent apologies but learn to be gentle about it, even find ways to laugh about it. When Re has remorse in overdrive he can't see my needs over his wave of remorse. Thankfully that is rare now. We have reached the point where I can demand an apology and we have a good laugh about it. If I need a serious apology and discussion we can go there but the laughing apologies are much more common and more fun! You can get there with time, patience, and understanding.