Step One -- Neurophysiology of Powerlessness -- Twelve Steps

Step One: Neurophysiology of Powerlessness

We admitted we were powerless –

that our lives had become unmanageable.

Most of us come to Alanon for help as a last resort. We have tried everything else. Perhaps we have seen its effects on others; it seems to have worked like magic, and we want some of that! Then we find out it isn’t magic – it’s a kind of spiritual common sense that we must buckle down and learn.

We start, like children in the first grade, with the First Step: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable...

Step One must be learned and repeated until it becomes a part of me. Whenever I give in to my natural impulse and habit to take over and try to force a change, I’m in trouble again. I know I can only make progress when I really believe in and practice the First Step.

I pray to be released from my compulsion to control my situation. I have often proved that I was unable to control it. Let me think, feel and know my powerlessness; then I will at least learn to let go and let God.

One Day At A Time, January 30th

What ever the obsessions that define our specific “illness” – whether it be alcohol, alcoholics, feelings, thoughts, food, drugs, sex etc…, we are powerless – or we would simply stop doing the things that harm us.

It is critical to first understand the neurochemistry of powerlessness that makes our lives – our perceptions and reactions and actions – unmanageable. This step is also critical because Step One is the foundation for all spirituality – and the missing link – in my experience – with all religious and psychological “theories” of recovery.

Our brains have three major areas of function:
1. The cerebral cortex, which thinks, reason, judges, evaluates – seemingly responds to facts and information.
2. The primitive or lower brain which operates based on impulse, energy levels, and programmed reactions, without the benefit of logic, reasoning, or intellectual judgement. Based on levels of neural energy within the brain, and programmed responses – perceptions and reactions – it acts to maintain and protect the brains balance of neural energies so that the brain does not have a real or perceived “nervous breakdown.”
3. The rest of the brain, other than for bodily functions, is basically for storage of memories and reactions in neural energy. The primitive brain suppresses those areas of risk for surges and eruptions of neural energy – creating an unconscious reservior of suppressed energy (e-motion) and unresolved pain and fear.

To the primitive brain, abandonment is as serious as physical death. And so abandonment experiences are stored and suppressed in the brain in the same format and intensity as actual physical trauma and threat. The brain actually can have post traumatic stress reactions to frequencies and levels of abandonment, as it would to prolonged exposure to life threatening circumstances.

As a result of the traumatic stress, the brain constricts its neural energy, storing woundedness and pain in pockets of unconscious infection, and resists external events and stimuli of abandonment which would puncture and release this infection back into current consciousness.

The importance of all of this is that the primitive brain can override, and actually use the cerebral cortex functions – doing serious irrational harm to oneself and others – in an attempt to control and survive the pain and fear of past and pending abandonment. The “will” actually becomes damaged and inoperable, and as a result a person can have illogical, irrational, and insane actions, thoughts, and reactions – without any choice to do otherwise.

This fact begins as a cognitive understanding, but must ultimately become experienced – improving conscious contact with ourselves. It must become a living reality or nothing can actually ever change.

What we will be working on here is improving our conscious experience of our powerlessness, and identifying where our primitive brain seems most sensitive and controlling. We will develop a practice of this step in “all our affairs” to match our levels of necessity and our specific symptoms.

How do we know when our primitive brain is in control?

The primitive brain operates on changes and levels of neural energy being experienced within our brain. It monitors and records energy levels, perceiving certain energy levels, and certain changes in energy level as “life threatening”. When it perceives a threat to the brain, it constricts and resists the energy. At that point, what we will consciously experience, if we can, are feelings. Feelings are neural energy – e-motions, energy in motion -- in the brain that has been constricted and resisted. The absence of constriction and resistance – possible only with a high level of conscious contact with God as we understand Him – is experienced as “serenity” – the absence of control – acceptance.

So to begin experiencing and identifying control – the opposite of acceptance of our powerlessness – we must learn to become conscious of and to experience “feelings”.

The Basics of E-motion:

The most basic feelings are: Numb, Angry, Afraid, Sad and Ashamed.

In every situation, in every circumstance, with every person and object, whether actual or only in thought, humans will experience some level of all of these feelings. Some levels may not be high enough to be significant or to require major work. It is important to identify which feelings seem to be the strongest indicators of control, and which areas of our lives causes the greatest neural response and constriction within the brain – or feelings.