Transcript of I Worked It. But It Didn’t Work. Why Didn’t You Tell Me? New

Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to The Edge.

Welcome to another episode of Notes from the Edge, friends. Today, just a content note, this episode does include discussion of addiction, sexual assault, trauma, mental illness, and potentially harmful experiences within recovery spaces. It reflects my lived experience and is not a recommendation to leave any program, treatment, or support system that is actually helping you. Please listen with care and seek qualified support if this brings anything difficult to the surface. So today is not an attack. It is actually a grief story. Because a lot of times grief is not about losing a person. And I, I think that's what we think. Sometimes grief is realizing the map you've been following was never meant for the terrain you were walking. So in early recovery from addiction, I spent 2 years, 6 days a week, sometimes 2 meetings a day I went to inpatient rehab, outpatient rehabilitation. I had sponsors. I did step work. I did inventories, confessions, make amends. I did exactly what I was told. And somewhere along the way, I stopped asking if it was actually helping me because nobody ever asked me a different question. Nobody asked me if it was making my trauma better or worse.

So I didn't fail the program. The program just failed to recognize how I'm built and designed. Talk about walking into recovery carrying what I've got: childhood trauma, history of sexual assault, history of domestic violence, psychiatric diagnosis, shame, nervous system dysregulation. I don't know, I'm so disordered. There are so many disorders. And yet everybody kept handing me the exact same tool. So, you know, we call it sharing in there, but it was more like trauma dumping, and a lot of it. And sometimes it would, it would dysregulate my nervous system so much that I just wanted a drink when I got out. I hardly ever felt better when I left. We weren't holding space for one another. We weren't asking for consent before we dropped these heavy stories, and nobody in there taught containment and co-regulation and window of tolerance and boundaries. Instead, they just said, "Keep coming back, keep coming back." Now, I will say it didn't cost anything, and it was better than being in a dive bar. However, Let's talk about being a woman in some 12-step recovery programs. So what happens when the woman sitting in the chair has spent her entire life believing she's defective already, and then you tell her she's powerless?

Why would I need more evidence that I'm worthless? So modern science has now taught us about nervous system regulation and somatic therapies and neuroplasticity and an internal family systems. And listen, my— I didn't need another moral inventory. What I needed was a safe space. So there's new addiction science. There's new addiction science. The science is changing. There are multiple evidence-based ways to understand addiction. Some researchers continue to support that the brain is diseased. While others describe addiction as a deeply learned pattern shaped by biology and trauma and environment and neuroplasticity. And the movement in the field is towards individualized care rather than assuming one explanation or one treatment fits everyone. So then, if addiction is learned, then guess what can be learned also? Healing. So the hardest question: why didn't anyone tell me there were other options? There is SMART Recovery, there is Refuge Recovery, there is Celebrate Recovery, there is Dharma Recovery, there is Women for Sobriety, there is Life Ring, there is medication-assisted treatment, there's trauma-informed psychotherapy, EMDR, internal family system, somatic experiencing, recovery coaching community. Community, nature, purpose, connection, not because they're better than any 12-step program, but because choice for someone like me matters.

Studies have found several mutual help approaches can be effective, and different people benefit from different models. So imagine telling someone with cancer there's only one treatment. No one would accept that. Yet we've been comfortable saying that about addiction. There's a gold standard. So I wasn't becoming healthier, I was shrinking. I was feeling worse about myself. So listen, if, if these 12-step programs saved your life, I celebrate that because there are statistics showing that it can. Keep going, keep doing what you're doing if it's working. This episode isn't about taking anything away, it's about giving someone else who may be listening permission to explore another path if the one they're working isn't working for them. There is no shame attached. It may just not be built for how you are made and designed. And none of this recovery should require us to become less of ourselves. It should help us to become more of who we really are. So I worked it. I had it all memorized, all done, all the writing, all the steps, and it didn't work for me. I was leaving there wanting to go back out, and I was feeling like I was going to be defective forever.

And I wish somebody had told me that that wasn't a personal or moral failure. Shame-based approaches don't work for women who have been through what I've been through. I wish somebody had told me I had choices. So if you're listening today and you're wondering whether you're broken because one approach isn't helping Maybe you're not broken. Maybe you simply just need a different map. I'm Lisa Lacey, and before we leave, I want to ask you, what have you performed in your life in order to survive? And when you find that answer, I'll see you at the edge.