Step 10 Toward Recovery | Continue to Take an Inventory

Speaker 1 00:00:03 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Pursue God podcast. Today we are in steps to recovery. Step number 10. I’m Pastor Brian, joined once again by our panel of experts, pastor Mark, pastor Eric Geis. Today, step number 10 is gonna be about maintenance. It’s about, it’s kind of like about the new normal, isn’t it? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, mark, why don’t we start by reading step 10 from the big book,
Speaker 2 00:00:27 Step 10. Step number 10 says, uh, continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admit it.
Speaker 1 00:00:36 So this is about like, I like this word maintenance. This is about, this is how it’s going to be from now on. I can’t just, I can’t just buy a new car and then never maintain the car, never get an oil change, never check the brakes, which is what I, by the way, what I hate about cars. I hate maintenance. I hate doing maintenance. And maybe some people today are, are thinking the same thing. Wait a second, I’m, this isn’t just go through the steps one time, check it off my list, and everything’s good now. And I, and I’m never gonna go back to addiction.
Speaker 3 00:01:10 Yeah. And if you look at the step that you’ll see some, you know, similarities to step number four, personal inventory. And the keyword here is we continued to take it. Okay? So this continuation of the principles that we’ve learned, um, putting them into practice, you know, and so, so for us, again, we’ve gained this new spiritual life. We’ve, we’ve been forgiven, set free, we’ve got a new way of living. Um, and a lot of that requires humility and taking a personal inventory and being willing to admit when we’re wrong. And, you know, make amends quickly. Now, like when we hurt people, we can, we can quickly do it instead of waiting years down the road, you know, like we did this first time handling it. Now we’re gonna try to maintain all the things that we’ve learned about, um, in our faith.
Speaker 1 00:02:06 So Jesus was asked by a bunch of religious leaders and Pharisees, they said, Jesus, what’s the most important rule in the rule book? Essentially? And Jesus’s answer is brilliant. He said, he said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength. And then he said, love your neighbor as yourself. And, and what I think he’s pointing to is that God is interested in the whole person. He said, love God, love your neighbor. Love yourself. So what I see in that are three things, and we’ll talk about that today when it comes to maintaining, being a healthy person and emotionally healthy spiritual person. God says, you need to have spiritual health, love God. You need to have relational health, love other people, and you need to have emotional health, which is loving yourself. And really, it’s all three of those things you need to, if you can’t love yourself, it’s really hard for you to love other people.
Speaker 1 00:03:05 And if, and none of that is possible if you don’t have a right relationship with God. And we’ve talked about this over the last 10 weeks, that really, you know, step number one was about recognizing God’s part in this whole thing. If you’re gonna be a healthy person, then God has to be involved in, in other words, there needs to be a, a healthy, what do we call that? Vertical relationship, a relationship with God. And then that healthy vertical relationship impacts our hor horizontal relationships with friends and family members and parents and spouses and kids and all that stuff. But, but really, if we don’t go all the way and, and, and learn to love ourselves, not in a, not in a selfish way, but in a godly appropriate way, if we can’t love ourselves, if we can’t forgive ourselves, then we can’t love and forgive and, and ask for forgiveness from our neighbors, from our friends, the people that we’ve offended like we talked about last time. And again, none of this happens if we don’t recognize that God loves us and we’re his children.
Speaker 3 00:04:05 Hmm. Yeah. So, hitting on that first thing that you talked about, loving God, you know, we’ve heard that often love God, love others as ourselves. And the question probably pops up, and this, I love to answer it. Maybe I’ll ask Mark, how would you answer? How do I, how do I love God?
Speaker 2 00:04:23 Well, we love God by, um, this new life that we’re living. We live a, we live a life to honor God. Um, and I think when we’re talking about this, I think it’s, this is recognizing that there’s an order of things, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we talk about love, God love others as ourself, and we need to love all three. Um, but, but if once they get out of order, that’s, that’s when things start to get hairy.
Speaker 1 00:04:50 Well, and that’s, that’s addiction. Uh, that’s sin in general, but that’s addiction is, it’s flipping that thing upside down. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And all we’re doing is loving ourselves and not, not the way God wants us to, but really all we’re doing is we’re putting ourselves first. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And when you put yourself first as a habit, as a rule for your life, when you put yourself first, you won’t get to those other two things. You won’t be able to love your neighbor, and you won’t be able to love God because you’re, because you’re at the center of your life. You’re on the throne of your life, which is addiction. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which is sin. Right. And so God says, yeah, love God. Get a, get a right relationship with God, then you can have a right, right. Relationship with people and, and you’ll learn then that you can have a right relationship with yourself.
Speaker 3 00:05:31 Yeah. And how I would answer, how do I love God? You know, it’s what you said was true. We, we, you know, we live the life he called us to live, find out how to honor him, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like God loved us by coming and, and dying for us, and graciously forgiving us and blessing us. Well, we’re not, God. We can’t do those things back to God. <laugh>, I can’t die for God, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, no, he, he, he loves me with the love that I almost can’t, can’t give to him. Um, and so the Bible kind of is clear, how do I love God by following his commandments, by, by being a doer, not just a hearer only, right? Like not just a receiver of love, but actually loving God back. He’s explained to us is by following him, going to his word, seek out what it says, and just do it.
Speaker 3 00:06:26 Being obedient. He, he wants us to be obedient to him. And, and that kind of goes to our, our first point, spiritual maturity. Like if we’re, if we’re gonna be right with God and continue to maintain our, our spiritual, uh, relationship, it requires us to be humble and look in the mirror every day. That’s kind of the part of the step that says, taking the personal inventory. We’ve gotta be constantly evaluating ourselves in position to God. Like, am I sinning against him? Have I, am I doing things that please him? Now, we need to, again, remember, we’re not working for God’s love. He, he gave us the love that we can’t give back the free gift, we accept it. But he says, if you, if you wanna love me back, if you want to appreciate me for what I did, then follow me. And I love how James puts it here.
Speaker 3 00:07:20 Uh, if we wanna maintain our spiritual maturity, he says this in James chapter one, verse starting in verse 23, for if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it’s like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself walk away and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and you do what it says, and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. If you claim to be religious, but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself and your religion is worthless, basically, he’s saying here, you know, take inventory by how you love God, by looking at how do I follow his word? Do I look at his word and, and forget what it says, and then go live a completely different way? Am I just a hearer that comes and sits and listens to sermons and hears people and reads the word, but it never actually comes out of my life? Uh, that’s, that’s what I think. Where we’re going with this is maintaining our spiritual maturity by using humility in the word of God to say, will I follow it or will I go my own
Speaker 1 00:08:25 Way? And the psalmists pray to prayer in Psalm 1 39, I love this passage, Psalm 1 39, verse 23 and 24, he says, search me of God and know my heart. What a what a bold prayer. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> right to say, I want to be known by you, God, I want to expose my, my stuff to Jesus says, try me and know my thoughts. You know, which a lot of addiction, a lot of that stuff is originates in your head. You’re thinking the wrong thoughts, and, but you’re never being accountable to God. You’re never opening yourself up to God. That’s why addiction continues. But so what a great prayer for an addict. Search me on God and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts. And then he says, and see if there’s any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. That’s a great prayer to pray every single day as you’re trying to maintain your victory.
Speaker 2 00:09:14 Yeah. I think that’s exactly what that is. That that is taking a daily, uh, personal inventory, right? It’s, and this is, I think, you know, we talk about living this God honor, God-honoring life. And I think what that really means is we want to continue to be transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus, right? Like, that is the goal here. Um, and in order to do that, it, it’s not a, a one step quick fix thing. This is, this is something, it’s, it’s a lifelong process because, you know, as much as I’d like to think differently, I am never going to reach that final goal here in this life, right? But, um, it’s, it is a lifelong process. And so I think that’s why the verbiage here in the step, you know, it says continue to take personal inventory. It doesn’t say, go back and do step four again. Go back and do another inventory, and then you’re done. It says continued. Like this is a new life that we’re living now, and we should be growing and learning. And like Eric was talking about, we should be digging into the word and, and learning better ways to honor God with our life. And in doing that, in digging into the word, I think it’s gonna give us better clarity on having our, our order of things correct in loving God, loving others, loving ourself.
Speaker 3 00:10:41 Yeah. And then, you know, another verse that pops in my mind, Galatians five talks about if we walk by the spirit, we won’t gratify the desires of the flesh. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and the, we’re trying to, you know, Paul says, kill the flesh. We’re, we’re trying to get rid of our old man. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> our old nature. How do we do that? We walk by the spirit. How do we walk by the spirits through spiritual disciplines? You know, we, we do things like read the Bible, pray fellowship, um, all of these things, right? Bible study and, and discipleship type, spiritual disciplines. That’s why it’s called discipleship, because it’s disciplined following God. And I love the, you know how James is saying, like, when you look at the word, use it like a mirror. How do you, how do you measure up? How do you look at this when you look into the perfect law of Christ? Um, his love, his grace, his patience, his, his maturity. He’s ultimately, like you said, the measure of a man, the most mature, godly, manly man, whoever walked the earth. Um, men and women ought to be trying to be like Christ. And that’s his goal, as, as that’s how we love him back, is we just look into his word and do what it says.
Speaker 1 00:12:02 So again, we can talk about all that on the spiritual plane. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and we, we could even, I think we can lose people sometimes, because they, some people say, well, how does that actually apply then to my, to those other two things? How does that apply to my relationships? How does that apply to my emotional life? Right? So, love God, spiritual love your neighbor, relational love yourself emotional. And I think a good way to maybe frame this is in what, what’s called emotional intelligence. E your eq, your emotional quotient. It’s not just your IQ that matters, which is great news, by the way, because not everyone has, IQ is something you can’t really change. You’re born with a, a with the ability to process, uh, intellectually or, or to not process as well as the next guy. But EQ is different. Eq emotional quotient is something you can actually grow in, you can develop, you can get better at.
Speaker 1 00:12:59 But it takes, it takes work. It takes being aware of it. And so let’s talk a little bit today about the, the five traits of emotional intelligence, the five markers of emotional intelligence. I’m gonna read them off and let, and then let’s kind of apply it to the person who is trying to grow in this, is trying to become a healthier person, spiritually, emotionally, relationally. Okay? The first three are about your own emotions. It’s about, about the first three are a little bit more directed toward you. I would call those emotions. And the last two are directed toward relationships. So number one is self-awareness. An emotionally intelligent person is self-aware. They can recognize their own emotions. They can express their emotions. They can understand why they’re feeling, how they’re feeling. I wanna talk about this for a minute with you guys number, but let’s just go through these real quick.
Speaker 1 00:13:54 Number two is self-regulation, managing your emotions. Number three is motivation. That’s directing your emotions toward a goal. So the first three are about your emotions, being aware of your emotions, managing your emotions, and then directing them toward a, a healthy goal. The last two are about relationships. It’s the number four is empathy. That means recognizing emotions in another person, which is really important. That’s especially important when it comes to what we talked about last week about making amends is recog, you know, reading the room and recognizing how someone’s receiving what you’re saying if they’re ready for it. Or are they defensive? Are they not ready for it? That’s called empathy. And then the fifth one is social skill, and that’s managing the emotions in your, in your spouse. So, so let’s kind of unpack these with the recovering addict in mind. Who’s saying, I want to be a healthier person. I want to be healthier spiritually, but I also want to, to be healthier emotionally and relationally self-awareness. Let’s start with that. Recognizing your emotions. Why is this hard? I think in particular for addicts to be self-aware?
Speaker 3 00:15:03 Well, I think that we have been afraid of emotions for our, our entire lives. And so dealing with emotions hasn’t been something that is natural or that we’ve spent a lot of time doing. Again, the self-medication aspect and running from emotions, not really understanding emotions, you know, not, I remember the first six months, I, I was clean and I see this in, in everybody. You know about the first year you’re clean and sober from alcohol or, or whatever it is that you’re, you’re trying to not do anymore. And you’re just like an emotional basket case, <laugh>, you know, like, you’re crying, you know, what is this fluid coming out of my eyes? <laugh>, you know, what is going, what is, yeah, <laugh>, what is going on here? You know, you’re asking people something wrong with me. Do I need to get on medication? And, and honestly, that’s normal.
Speaker 3 00:15:59 That is so normal because you’ve been su suppressing your emotions with so much like, you know, dopamine and serotonin and all this, all of this, you know, uh, stuff outside of your body, putting it into your body. You’ve been suppressing it so long that finally when you get clean, your body naturally wants to repair itself, including your brain, you know, and all the things that comes from, you know, emotions come from our, our minds, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And we call that also the heart. But, um, your body’s trying to repair itself. And so there, there’s hormones involved and, and you’re trying to get back to this, this maintenance level that we’re talking about, like a, a good baseline. And we don’t even know what our baseline of emotion emotions is. Therefore, and, and regardless of being able to try to understand what I’m feeling, I remember, yeah.
Speaker 3 00:16:52 Being in, in counseling again, where they’d give us this sheet, and you guys have probably all seen it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, maybe it was in elementary school or wherever, but it’s the sheet of all these different, and now it’s their emojis, you know, that’s like the smiling face, the sad face, the crying face. And it would have a label above it, like sad, mad, irritated, depressed. And they’re all these different feelings. And the counselors would always say, you know, every day we had to have a journal. And one of ’em was, write how you feel and then write some thoughts. And oftentimes people will, they’ll confuse thoughts and feelings and, and people use this, uh, you’ll hear people all the time. And, and it really is a pet peeve of mine when people say, I feel like, you know, um, that’s not the right thing to do. Or I, I feel like I just want to do this, or whatever. And it’s like, nah, it’s not a feeling. And I remember my counselor used to get mad at me, like, no, that’s a thought. Tell me, are you sad, mad, <laugh>, angry, depressed, whatever. Identify the
Speaker 1 00:17:56 Emotion. So the emotion behind the thought. Yeah, exactly. Or underlying the thought. Now, again, I, maybe even today, some people are listening to this saying, I’ve never really even considered, you know, go back and maybe we should identify a few emotions. Cuz when people think of emotions, they think of sad or mad. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that’s what most people think of. There’s so much more Oh yeah. To emotions than sad and mad. There’s so much more that can underlie your addiction. Because what’s happening is there’s something you feel deep down that you don’t want to deal with. You don’t want to be self-aware about it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you don’t want to be honest about it. You don’t want to put it on the table and dissect it and look into it. You’re too afraid to do that. And so what do you do? You, you, you do drugs. You, you, you, you go to that anesthetizing behavior that is just, that it’s an anesthetic so that you can’t feel it. You don’t, well, that’s kind of the root of so many addictions is you just don’t want to feel, you don’t want to deal with your feelings. You don’t want to face your feelings. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And we’re saying, you gotta stop that. Right. So what are some of those feelings that underlie so many addictions?
Speaker 2 00:19:06 Well, I think there’s, there’s a lot of it. I mean, there’s the anger, the sadness. There’s depression, there’s, uh, hurt. There’s just shame. God, there’s shame and Yeah. And insecurity. Yeah. And those things like we’re talking about, we’ve been so used to, um, <laugh> trying to numb those feelings that, you know, I I, I was, I was laughing, Eric, when you were talking about people who are fresh in recovery and you see just so many raw emotions coming out of ’em. I would say the other thing I see is this panic <laugh>, like, you see this panic because like, they don’t know what to do with this. They, they just don’t, you know, I think we’ve both been there. Like, you don’t know what to do. It’s, it’s just this panic mode. And so this is really important in understanding the, that these emotions have always been there. You’ve just masked them all this time. Now we’re gonna learn how to acknowledge those emotions and deal with them.
Speaker 1 00:20:05 Yeah. So acknowledging them is the first thing that’s hard enough. Being self-aware. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, recognizing your note, your emotions, naming them. My, I, my daughter or my wife used to always say this to my daughter and son when they were little and they would, they would lash out. Think about little kids. They la they only, they, they don’t, they can’t manage their emotions, which is the second thing. They can’t regulate their emotions. They have to learn to regulate their emotions. But what would come out, especially with my son, is he would have outbursts of anger, but it was because there was a, an emotion beneath it. That, that he would mask it with this other emo a more manly emotion. He would, anger would mask the other emotions, insecurity, unworthiness, whatever. Disappointment, shame. And so Tracy, my wife, would always say, Hey, use your words. Use your words.
Speaker 1 00:20:56 And I think that’s what this first one is, is use your words. And some people don’t have the vocabulary. So you guys helped with some of those, some of those emotions. Use your words, name your emotions, recognize what those emotions are. Be honest, don’t be afraid of ’em. Be honest about ’em. They’re not you. They don’t define you. You don’t have to be defined by those emotions. But you will be, if you don’t acknowledge them, if you don’t use them, everybody else can see that you’re insecure or that you feel unworthy or that whatever, that you’re angry. Everybody else can see those emo how about you Be honest with it. And then what you can do is you can move to the second thing, which, which is to begin to regulate. Which is to begin to say, okay, now that I know what this emotion is, let me think about what the healthy way is to express this emotion. You’re not trying to stuff it, you’re trying to express it in a healthy way that’s called self-regulation.
Speaker 3 00:21:42 Yeah. And let’s just be clear, the reason why we’re talking about emotions is because they affect our recovery. Right? If we’ve been masking and, and trying to suppress them. And now when they pop up, um, you know, two things is, one is we want to stay clean and sober. We want to avoid relapse. And so it’s gonna be helpful to us if we can identify, regulate, maintain, and learn how to deal with our emotions. And then secondly, it’s going to help our relationships. We just dealt with lessons eight and nine, making amends. We don’t want to go breaking our relationships after we’ve just made a lot of them better. And so, uh, we’ve gotta learn to handle these emotions before they start affecting our, our recovery and our sobriety. And so one of the things that I like to do in, you know, in relationships well and, and personally, um, is yeah, think about what, why am I having all these thoughts?
Speaker 3 00:22:46 You know, I’ll have negative thoughts, right? And, and it’s always getting what you said, Brian, get, let, let me get to the root of the feeling or the emotion to why I’m having these thoughts. And oftentimes, you know, for me, you know, one of the feelings that I have that like has overwhelmed my life is security. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so those insecure thoughts, well those insecure feelings will turn into to thoughts, you know, may maybe even like paranoid thoughts, like, this person doesn’t like me, they’re planning on doing something to hurt me or against me, or, or whatever. Right? And then if I don’t deal with that because it’s an emotion, then it’s a thought, then it’ll turn into an action. If I don’t deal with it before it comes to an action and identify what it is, then I’m probably gonna act out, do something weird, hurt people or possibly relapse. So it’s
Speaker 1 00:23:42 Important. And I love how, uh, you know, Eric on staff, I think I’ve shared this on this podcast before, but I gotta brag on you again in, in terms of self-regulation. So we were in a staff meeting one time and I had shared something that made you feel insecure. Now, you didn’t say something in the middle of staff, but you called me later that day or maybe the next day. And I appreciate that because this is a great example of self-regulation. You didn’t just let that feeling fester, that feeling of insecurity fester. I remember you actually called me and said, when you said this thing, it made me feel insecure. That was so refreshing to hear. And what we were able to do, you and I both is we were able to, to nip that feeling in the bow. I was able to clarify what I meant by what I said.
Speaker 1 00:24:25 You said, okay, I see. And now you were able to move forward that didn’t have a grip, a grip on your life that didn’t, that didn’t become, that root of insecurity, didn’t grow into something else, which I’m sure 10, 20 years ago it might have done just that because you wouldn’t have regulated that emotion in, in a healthy way. You didn’t, you didn’t have this new way of living, but now you do. And you’re so much healthier as a result, you’re a healthy person cuz you’re committed to regulating those emotions and dealing with them when they come up instead of stuffing ’em. And
Speaker 3 00:24:57 You know, I don’t want to sound, I’m not trying to like sound prideful or anything, but, but you, what’s crazy is that people that have been through recovery and addiction, having to deal with these things, actually, uh, it might put you up, you know, a give you a leg up on the rest of society because the rest of society struggles with these same things. That’s so true. They’ve been, they’ve been ma maybe they didn’t have as bad of addictions or maybe they, it was food or, or some other thing that they’ve used. But like the rest of society struggles with being able to name their emotions. And so actually, because I’ve, because I’ve been trained and disciplined in this way, you know, not always because I chose that, but because this was the path that God led me down. When I am super clear about my emotions, I think a lot of people are like, whoa, this is intense. You’re weird man. Like
Speaker 1 00:25:53 <laugh>, but you, but it’s true Eric. Yeah. Eq EQ is more of a predictor of success in the workplace than iq. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It’s true. Which is which I, to to me is, I’m, I’m with you. I think a lot of people with who have gone through recovery, your life is just starting because you are learning. If you can do this, step 10, if you can learn to maintain healthy emotions and relationships and in this healthy spiritual life, you have a, you really do, you have a leg up in, not just in your relationships, but you have a leg leg up in the workplace, you’ll end up being successful because these are tools that you can use in your careers.
Speaker 2 00:26:32 Yeah. Well, and it’s funny that, that you mentioned that cuz I was, I was just thinking earlier about, about this step, what this step really is, you know, it’s, um, continuing to take personal inventory is because we want to be transformed, right? And so what came to mind for me was Romans chapter 12 verse two, which relates to the world as well, says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And that’s really what this is about, right? It’s not operating the way that we always have, not operating the way that the world does. We need to learn to operate in a different way. Now, we used to be ruled by our emotions. We thought we weren’t, we thought we were like stuffing them or hiding ’em, but they ruled us. Like when those tough emotions came along, it, it totally, uh, derailed us. We, and so we would, we would go back to our addiction to try and, and so our emotions ruled our lives. Now we don’t want to be ruled by them anymore. So we need to be aware of them. And now we need to know how to handle them differently.
Speaker 1 00:27:46 Yeah. And that really leads us to this third mark of an emotionally healthy person. And its motivation. It’s directing your emotions toward a goal so that you have this growth mindset, which I, which I do think is something I notice in people who’ve, like you guys that have had victory over addiction is you guys direct your emotions. You said, I am gonna, I’m not gonna, the emotions aren’t gonna be a neutral thing anymore. Um, I’m gonna utilize my emotions and I’m gonna direct them toward a goal. We’re gonna set goals now and we’re gonna move forward. We’re gonna advance, we’re gonna have victory in our emotional lives. We’re not gonna let them control us. We’re not gonna let them, uh, be triggers for more addict addictive behavior. We’re gonna direct it toward a positive goal.
Speaker 3 00:28:30 Yeah. Let’s, let’s not forget that emotions aren’t bad <laugh>. Even the, the seemingly negative emotions are not bad. They were given to us by God. We were created with emotions. All right? Now, some of them have been used for bad and d we’ve dealt with them in, in, in wrong ways. But God himself is an emotional being and he has righteous anger even, you know, like I can use anger for good now, you know, like for justice, right? I can fight for, for something that angers me in, in a positive way. It can compel me and motivate me to want to, to change myself. Or it can compel me and motivate me to want to, um, stand up for a cause, stand up for something that I believe in. You know? And so anger, um, I, I was just reading this in our lesson, Ephesians chapter 4, 26 through 27, be angry and do not sin.
Speaker 3 00:29:27 That means that there is a, a way to be angry but not have it be negative, you know? And then it says, don’t let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. That kind of goes back to if we don’t deal with it, it will, will manifest itself in the negative way. But if we can control, if we can gain, um, management over our emotions, and that’s what I think emotional intelligence really is. If we can gain management over our emotions, we can use them for what they were meant for.
Speaker 1 00:29:59 Okay? So those are the first three out of five. Self-awareness, self-regulation, and then self-motivation around your emotions. And then that leads, I think just naturally leads to the last two, um, elements of an emotionally healthy person. Cuz an emotionally healthy person isn’t just healthy emotionally, they’re healthy relationally. So the last two are about how your emotions and you handling your emotions well, how that actually begins to impact your relationship. So number four then is empathy. Empathy, empathy is like the other side of self-awareness. Self-awareness is recognizing emotion in you. Empathy is recognizing emotion in someone else. And this is what I love about emotionally healthy per people, is once you deal with your emotions, well now you can be like, oh, cool, now I can start helping someone else. Now I can start recognizing when I see anger or insecurity. And I would imagine people in victory, people who have recovered from addiction, are recovering from addiction are really good with empathy. Because you guys can recognize in an addict, I’ve heard you guys say it throughout this podcast, you could, you guys can recognize in an addict an emotion because you’ve been there, you’ve, you’ve dealt with it, you’ve been honest with your own emotion. So you recognize it in someone else probably before they even recognize it in Ms. Hills.
Speaker 2 00:31:20 Yeah. Well we can, where does it say that in the bible? That, you know, we can comfort in the same way we’ve been comforted mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like that. That’s a, that’s a true thing. And um, as you’re talking about this, I remember, um, this, this being something that was a bit of a transformation in my life is actually having empathy for people because I did not, I had no empathy for people. Um, and so as I’ve grown in my relationship with Christ and I’ve, I’ve, you know, learned to be more emotionally intelligent, learning about my own emotions, I’ve actually, it’s, it was almost involuntary. I started to have empathy for people, you know, that I never did before. And it was, it was kind of the same thing. It was like this panic mode thing again. Like, why, why am I feeling this way? <laugh>, you know, why do I feel so strongly? Yeah. Um, but that is, that that’s a good thing. You know, that is a, it’s, and it’s been something that has been growing in me. I’m still growing in that area, but it’s definitely a new development.
Speaker 3 00:32:23 Yeah. I would say I certainly can spot and name my emotions and I can name other people’s. I can pick those out really well. Um, I think one of the areas I struggle with is empathy. Um, in not, like I have levels of seriousness in my mind, degrees of, you know, and, and oftentimes I probably approach it maybe in a selfish way, but I think, man, I went through this, you know, I was able to endure through some crazy consequences and discipline. And, and so sometimes I’ll have that same, i’ll, I’ll think, think that towards some people, like, why can’t you get through this?
Speaker 1 00:33:09 Like, suck it up buttercup.
Speaker 3 00:33:10 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:33:10 Like, that’s interesting. So because you’ve been there. Yeah. It almost co That’s a good point cuz empa this, the fourth thing is empathy. It’s not just recognize cuz you can recognize emotions in someone else and not have empathy, but that’s not, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about recognizing emotions in someone else and really, really saying, I feel, I feel badly, like I feel for you mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:33:34 <affirmative>, right? Yeah. And, and that’s something that the Lord’s helping me with. Uh, I mean, I, I try to search the scriptures and look at Jesus life, you know, I try to, I try to pick out, because that’s the thing that motivates me the most. I’m, I think, you know, when talking about all this, like even with personalities, I’m more of a more logical than, than I am emotional. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know? And so for me, what ties to my emotions has to be some kind of information or truth. You know, <laugh> some kind of logic, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so I search the scriptures and I try to find the way Jesus modeled empathy, you know? And, and certainly he was, he was very gracious to people, you know, the woman who was caught in a, caught in adultery, right? He’s, he, he basically defended her in front of everybody, but then he says, go and sin no more.
Speaker 3 00:34:29 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so there’s always two sides I think to, to, it. It’s, it’s, let’s not just be empathetic and not bring up the truth part. And so, so for me, I’m still processing how to do that, especially as a pastor. I want to be both to a person and sometimes one, it’s, it’s the right truth at the right time type of a thing where it’s like right now the person just needs to, and that’s, that’s where God has grown me even in ministry, is when I’m talking with someone. And I, I know there’s a truth behind this that needs to be learned. The the reality is, is I need to be patient with that truth. Knowing my personality, knowing that I can say, here’s the solution, I want to fix the problem. Sometimes they just need some compassion. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, so and so God’s been training me like, I don’t have to solve all the problems right here in this one conversation. I can be compassionate, I can have empathy and just feel with them. And then knowing that in the future it’s gonna lead to truth, it’s gonna lead to life change. And it’s, it’s gonna lead to accountability.
Speaker 1 00:35:39 So then there’s one more, there’s a final, there’s a final skill when it comes to eq and it’s called, we’re just gonna call it social skill. And social skill is like the other side of number two. Number two is managing your emotions. Social skill is managing the other person’s emotions. And this is tricky because you can’t really, man, you can’t really, you can only clean your side of the street, right? Like we said in the last episode, you can’t, you can’t make someone be an emotionally healthy person. But the ultimate sign of an emotionally healthy person is that you’re doing everything you can to help them manage their emotions. So you’ve learned to do it for yourself. You’ve managed your emo own emotions. And now, now that you can recognize someone else’s emotions, you can actually be part of the solution for them and, and help them lovingly help them manage your emotions.
Speaker 1 00:36:30 And the best example of this for me is again, what my wife would do with our kids, when they were little, she would help them manage their emotions. She was really good at that. A lot of parents don’t know how to do that cuz I can’t even manage their own emotions. But think about it with kids is that’s part of the job of a parent, is to help them to grow, to be an emotionally healthy person. I want to help you to identify your emotions and I want to help you to manage your emotions and I’m gonna do it with some empathy. And so this, this is the, this is sort of the pinnacle of an emotionally healthy person. When I see this in people, I’m like, that guy has it figured out because he doesn’t just manage his own emotions, but he can diffuse a situation Hmm. That’s managing someone else’s. That’s, that is social skills diffusing a situation instead of like adding fuel to the fire mm-hmm. <affirmative> in a, in an, in an emotionally intense situation. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:37:21 <affirmative>, I, I think that’s probably, that’s probably the majority of what I end up doing in mentoring is helping somebody else manage their emotions because of the people that I end up mentoring who have generally gone through a lot of the similar things that I have mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I’ve, I’ve learned to recognize those emotions that I have there. I have that empathy and then, um, and that’s what they need more than anything is to be helped in managing those emotions that they have. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:37:51 <affirmative>. Yeah, that’s a good point. And, and again, in your life, this is such great proof that, that you, you know, you probably couldn’t have imagined doing that five or 10 years ago. No. But here you are because you, because you’re a, you’re a healthier person and you’ve committed to the maintenance and self-care now, and this is the ultimate way of making sure it takes in your life. Now you’re helping someone else. Yeah. And it’s helping you too. It’s growing, it’s growing your EQ every time you sit down with someone and help them manage their emotions.
Speaker 2 00:38:24 Yeah. It’s one of those things that is the beautiful way that God works, right? Is is, um, using everything, even the worst things that we’ve gone, gone through for good. It, it’s, it’s, I remember the first time that, that, um, somebody came to us for marriage, uh, mentoring and first off it was the most humorous thing to me. <laugh> somebody who pretty much destroyed their marriage. Yeah. Uh, but then, yeah, that was just something that just, um, was overwhelming to me was that God was going to use that for something good. And it was amazing.
Speaker 1 00:39:01 And we’ll get to that in the next couple of steps as we’re kind of winding to a close here be because I think as, as we’re finishing up these 12 steps, we’re gonna see that if you don’t get in the game and help someone else, then you can’t, you can’t ever fully be confident that your recovery will take and that you’ll live, live in victory. And this is a principle we see in scripture, right? Jesus. Jesus walked with the disciples for three years and then he left. He said, I’m not gonna just, I’m not gonna, it, it’s not gonna just end with you being takers all the time. It has to end with you being givers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so he sent them out and he sent them to go make disciples. And he, and he told them, now you do what I’ve been doing with you.
Speaker 1 00:39:47 And, and that’s really how victory gets cemented in our lives. And we’ll talk about that in these next couple lessons. So today was step number 10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, we promptly admitted it. So it’s about maintenance and continuing to move forward and be a healthy person spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. If you wanna talk about this topic, you can find a video to go along with it, discussion questions, and so much more at pursue god.org/recovery. Uh, use it for your family, your small group, or one-on-one with your mentor or your sponsor. And join us next time where we’ll talk about step number 11.