I Am Recovering from the Image

There is something appealing about becoming the person who has finally figured things out. We may look back upon years of addiction, damaged relationships, and difficult decisions with the hope that these experiences now belong to someone we used to be. Our past becomes a story about what went wrong, while our present offers evidence that we have changed. Perhaps we have become sober, dependable, spiritually committed, or capable of helping others who struggle with the same difficulties. These changes can be important and deeply meaningful. But what happens when the person we have become begins requiring the same protection as the person we were trying to leave behind?

The twelfth Step of Alcoholics Anonymous concerns carrying the message to others and practicing the principles of recovery in everyday life. Someone who has benefited from the fellowship may begin helping another person, offering experience, encouragement, and practical guidance. There is something generous about this arrangement because what has been received becomes available to be given. Yet helping can also become a familiar way of securing our own identity. We may begin regarding ourselves as the wise sponsor, the dependable guide, or the person whose recovery provides an example for everyone else.

The difficulty is not simply that we enjoy being admired. Our desire for recognition belongs to how we have come to understand ourselves through relationships with others. We may have spent much of our lives becoming the person we imagined another most desired. Perhaps we learned to be responsible, generous, or indispensable because these qualities seemed to secure affection. Recovery can change many important things about our lives without necessarily changing our dependence upon that familiar arrangement.

Someone who once needed to be recognized as the good parent may now need to be recognized as the exceptional sponsor. Another who has always been the responsible one may become increasingly attached to being the person everyone consults for guidance. The content of the image has changed, but the need to maintain it may remain remarkably familiar.

This is one reason the work of sponsorship becomes more complicated than simply sharing experience. Someone may sincerely want to help while gradually expecting the person receiving that help to follow their advice, admire their wisdom, or demonstrate through successful recovery that the sponsor has been useful. The relationship begins containing an unspoken agreement: I will provide guidance, and you will become evidence that my guidance works.

But another person's recovery cannot become an account through which we calculate our own worth.

The person seeking help has a life that will never entirely resemble ours. Their family, history, faith, relationships, and experience of addiction may differ considerably from what we have known. They may find some of our guidance useful while needing to discover other ways of living. Sometimes they will disagree with us, disappoint us, or make choices we would not have made. We may be tempted to interpret these differences as resistance or a failure to understand what we have learned. Yet offering experience does not give us authority over what another person must become.

A sponsor can provide guidance without becoming the destination of someone else's recovery. They may describe what has helped them, explain how they have navigated particular difficulties, and remain available when another person needs support. But the gift becomes more generous when it does not require the recipient to reproduce the giver's experience. We can be useful without becoming indispensable, offer direction without demanding obedience, and care about another person's progress without making their success a verdict about ourselves.

This also protects the sponsor from the burden of representing recovery as a completed achievement. Someone may have maintained sobriety for many years while remaining vulnerable to resentment, pride, shame, or the desire to control how they are seen. Their experience may have taught them a great deal, but it has not removed the contradictions that belong to being human. The person who offers help may continue discovering the ways they attempt to preserve an acceptable image of themselves.

Perhaps the most useful word is not recovered, but recovering. Recovering keeps the work in the present tense. It acknowledges that we continue encountering situations in which our intentions and behavior do not agree, our generosity carries hidden expectations, or our reputation becomes more important than the relationships we are attempting to repair. These moments need not mean that recovery has failed. They may provide opportunities to recognize how easily the familiar image returns.

Anonymity becomes important again because the message does not have to depend upon the reputation of the person carrying it. We may share what has helped without requiring our story to become a model for everyone else. The person listening does not need to admire us before something useful can be received. Nor must they eventually become like us for the relationship to have mattered.

This is a different understanding of strength. We may imagine that a strong person has conquered their difficulties and now stands above them, but perhaps strength involves becoming able to remain present when those difficulties appear in unfamiliar ways. We can tolerate disappointment without demanding that others reassure us, acknowledge a mistake without collapsing into shame, and recognize our wish to control another person without pretending that the wish is not ours.

The twelfth Step returns us to the question that has accompanied the entire journey. Can we live without requiring the person we have become to provide a completed account of who we are? We may have spent years attempting to become the person another would fully desire, only to discover that the image continues demanding recognition, reassurance, and protection. Even the identity of being recovered can become another version of the person we imagine we ought to be.

I am recovering from the image. This does not mean that I will stop recognizing myself through relationships or abandon the meaningful identities that have developed throughout my life. It means that I may become less dependent upon those identities to determine the entirety of who I am. I can share what I have learned without requiring that it make me wise, care for someone without becoming the caretaker, and offer help without demanding that another person's life become evidence of my goodness.

Perhaps the greatest gift of recovery is not becoming the person we were always supposed to be. It may be discovering that we can continue living, loving, and becoming without requiring that person to arrive.