Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery

Howard Malitz returns to the pod to chat with Patrick and Thom about the deeper levels of recovery he discovered in the course of trying to find peace at work and in marriage. Allen joins the episode in the closing stretch to give us an update on his arduous physical recovery from a recent surgery. Throughout, we touch on how Emotional Sobriety offers us connection more than any other singular qua...

Joe C. and surprise drop-in guest Howard Malitz discuss the next Grapevine Emotional Sobriety article and go into an intimate discussion of the financial pressures we encounter in recovery.   Check out Howard Malitz’ Seasons of Sobriety podcast: https://pod.link/1460539626   Read the Grapevine story “Doing Just Fine” here: https://www.aagrapevine.org/magazine/2024/jan/doing-just-fine   Upcoming ev...

Joe C. returns to take a plunge with us into our next Grapevine story about opportunities for emotional sobriety showing up in countless small ways in our daily lives.   Read the Grapevine story here: https://www.aagrapevine.org/magazine/2024/jan/little-surrenders   Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram: thomrutledge2 Joe C. Twitter: @Rebellion_Dogs   Friendly Circle...

Allen, Thom, Herb K., and Patrick delve further into the AA Grapevine detailing inspirational stories of recovery and emotional sobriety. One particular story about grief and tolerance hits close to home for each host in distinct ways.   Read the Grapevine story here: https://www.aagrapevine.org/magazine/2024/jan/it-all-adds   Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram: t...

For the first of several upcoming episodes with rotating guests unpacking an Emotional Sobriety-themed AA Grapevine issue, Thom and Allen discuss a story about one recovering woman’s garden being ravaged. From an initial impulse to take an unfortunate occurrence personally and impose an unreasonable expectation on her environment, this writer remembers her gratitude and claims an experience rather...

Longtime collaborator of Allen's Herb K. returns to the pod. In light of a recent enlargement of his spiritual life, Herb discusses Steps 10-12 of the 12 Steps, which move us from a program of recovery to a program of living. Learn more about Herb at his website:  https://herbk.com/ To register for Herb and Allen's upcoming London conference for Friendly Circle Berlin (Emotional Sobriety workshop)...

Looking ahead to a year ripe with possibilities for bringing the best possible attitude to our trials and tribulations.   Next week we’ll be joined by Herb K. to discuss the next Essential Insight, and in the weeks beyond we’ll circle back to the latest episode of AA Grapevine, which highlights Emotional Sobriety.   Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram: thomrutledge...

As we head into another year of the podcast, Carol Carter, Thom, Allen, and Patrick reflect on a painful but also incredibly constructive 2023. Carol’s retirement brought her into fuller joy and embrace of self than she ever thought possible. Thom endured his wife’s surgery and a hellish cancer treatment. Allen has marched bravely through the ending of his marriage. Patrick has weathered a breakup...

Allen and Thom answer some of your Facebook questions and investigate how we can bring the best possible attitude towards a notoriously stressful time of year.   In particular we look at the concept of Joy: we can’t experience life’s highs without also enduring its lows. Coming to the end of a year that had as much pain and setback as positive growth, this is vital to remember.   Check out Joe C's...

Thom, Joe, and Patrick (with a late episode appearance by Allen, fresh off his somatic therapy workshop) discuss how our individual conceptions of rightness and wrongness intersect with our recoveries. How can they enhance or detract from our relationships? And as always, how can we expand our emotional sobriety within these value markers?   Check out Joe's latest Rebellion Dogs episode for more o...

One essential component of emotional sobriety is our willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, developing the best possible attitude towards them. This is a process, not a fixed point. In our trepidation about the zigs and zags life throws our way, we must respect our fear of the unknown but not give that fear privilege.   Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram:...

Our resistance to change and our inability to properly feel grief is connected on some levels to a lack of faith in our capacities to grow and cope. With consideration of the Thanksgiving holiday, Thom, Allen, and Patrick take a look at how those things we resent can put us in touch with deeper gratitude, containing their own lessons about emotional sobriety.   Follow us on social media. Podcast T...

Patience and practice are what Thom, Allen, and now Patrick attempt to bring to bear in a set of sudden life-altering, life-threatening circumstances that mark the end of 2023.   Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram: thomrutledge2 Joe C. Twitter: @Rebellion_Dogs   Friendly Circle Berlin Workshop Group meets every Monday @ 7:30pm (Berlin), 6:30pm (Ireland & UK),...

Thom returns to the pod to bring Allen and Patrick up to speed on his last few challenging months, and unveils the plan for the new book he’ll be collaborating on with Allen: an update of “Earning Your Own Respect” to include a dimension of Emotional Sobriety. Allen describes some recent experiences he’s had with serendipity-a word that can describe the recovery gifts lying in wait for all of us i...

Allen and Joe C. delve their personal experiences with trauma in trying to highlight how these principles of Emotional Sobriety can still come through for us in light of what before may have been unspeakable.   To register for Allen's October 28th Emotional Sobriety Symposium, please visit the following link: https://4dphd.com/emotional-sobriety-symposium/     There are still some spots left in hi...

RTT (Rapid Transformational) Therapist, Hypnotherapist and coach Janine McJannet has spent the better part of her life reckoning with the impact of being an adult child of alcoholics. From the loss of her father to the chaos of her own addiction, she has finally found recovery in poetry and soul empowerment, which she discusses with Allen by way of describing how emotional sobriety has come into p...

Having flourished in his connection to others through the use of Zoom and WhatsApp during the pandemic, Friendly Circle Berlin Group regular Patrick McAteer joins Allen to discuss how his addictive “maladaptive coping strategies” have also been put to work for positive ends. He tells us his story, having attained 24 years of sobriety at one time before a painful relapse. He eventually found a diff...

Allen and Joe find an unlikely Emotional Sobriety kindred spirit in Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go," a classic children's book that doubles as an elemental distillation of their work in this new frontier of recovery. Joe sticks around to tell us about a recent interview he conducted on the Rebellion Dogs podcast (link below), about Bill Wilson and the origins of Alcoholics Anonymous' most fo...

Melanie Gulde, program director of the soon-to-open Divided Sky residential recovery retreat located in Ludlow, Vermont, drops by discuss her new approach to in-patient recovery treatment. The forthcoming passion project incorporates much of Allen’s conception of emotional sobriety, even some of his books, and integrates body-focused forms of treatment. She also describes a personal recovery that...

In a later season of her life, Susan Chandler had to reckon with the collapse of a marriage, unemployment, the loss of a community, and horrific traumas both old and new. Through her embrace of recovery and a recent turn towards emotional sobriety, she’s gained a new perspective that has saved her life in countless ways. Allen chats with a friend, colleague, and vital member of our emotional sobri...

To be loved, to be accepted, and to belong, we early in life construct an identity that, as Allen describes, is like “building a foundation on someone else’s property.” The dissonance can knock us out of alignment and alienate us from our true natures. The process of emotional sobriety is a process of awakening into our True Self. Patrick, Joe C. and Allen unpack the third chapter of Allen’s book...

Celeste Yvonne, certified recovery coach and author of It’s Not About the Wine: The Loaded Truth Behind Mommy Wine Culture joins us to chat about motherhood, growing up in an alcoholic home, the terror and hidden opportunities of the pandemic, and losing and making friends along the way. The focal point of her work in recovery is looking beyond the wine (or any substance), for the solution to life...

Therapist Roger Andes, longtime friend and frequent collaborator on Thom and Allen’s 12-Step workshops, drops in to discuss his latest experiences with self-esteem. Influenced in large part by the work of Nathaniel Branden, it’s a central theme to his area of study and touches every level of the recovery process.   Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram: thomrutledge2...

Living peacefully with the irreconcilable is at the core of what creates change. Thom and Allen alternately draw upon their own journeys towards acceptance - past and present.    Follow us on social media. Podcast Twitter: @EmSobrietyPod Instagram: thomrutledge2 Joe C. Twitter: @Rebellion_Dogs   Allen’s book, 12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety: https://www.amazon.com/12-Essential-Insight...

On a weekend of record heatwaves, to escape the crushing anxiety Thom and Patrick invite longtime collaborator Carol Carter on the pod to gauge her emotional sobriety after retiring from her longtime job. Thom shares some details about the attitude he’s trying to bring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment, while Patrick laments losing $750 in the space of five minutes, and how that challenged his...