Amber Hollingsworth (YouTube) critiques the AA/12-step notion of being "powerless" (Step One), arguing it can be accurate in a narrow sense (people cannot safely moderate an active addiction) yet harmful if interpreted as wholesale victimhood. She outlines the "bargaining" stage many experience, offers actionable alternatives (change people/places, remove stash, create accountability, practice honesty), and encourages self-knowledge. She promotes Truity online assessments (Enneagram and Love Styles) as tools to improve self-understanding and connection (which she frames as central to recovery), and ends with a CTA to a related video.
Chapters
Now, to be honest, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the term powerless. In some ways, I do kind of believe in the concept, but in other ways, I feel like it's a hindrance. For those of you who aren't familiar with that concept. It actually comes from Alcoholics Anonymous. It comes from the first step, the first of the 12 steps. Now listen carefully, sweet, sweet boy. Step one. To admit that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life has become unmanageable. Which reads, we admitted to ourselves that our lives have become unmanageable and that we were powerless over our addictions. Or if you're an aa, you say powerless over alcohol. Now, if you're in Al Anon, which is like the AA version for the family member, then it goes something like, we admitted to ourselves that our lives have become unmanageable and that we were powerless over our loved ones. Addiction. Now, before I tell you why I've moved away from this concept, I want to tell you what I actually still like about it and still do believe in. Related to this term, power powerlessness. Most people, when they're in the beginning stages of trying to overcome a drug or alcohol problem, they go through sometimes years of this stage that I call bargaining. And it's this trial and error process that we all go through where we think we can cut it back, or we can drink manageably, or we can only use on the weekends, or we can only spend so much money on it, ultimately we're just trying to find a way to keep it in our lives a little bit, but not let all the other negative consequences come with it. That really just doesn't work for people. And so I think that's where the concept of powerlessness can be useful. I'm powerless to try to manage an addiction in my life, which means when I'm trying to cut it back or control it or have it in my life, but not let the bad things happen, I do kind of think we're powerless to do that. It just doesn't work, as so many people who are in recovery will tell you. But that doesn't mean that you're powerless in general. It just means that the trying to cut it back and keep it under control, that part isn't going to work. But the thing I don't like about the concept is it kind of gives off the impression that I'm just a victim and I can't help it and that there's nothing I can do about this problem, which is completely untrue in my opinion. Whether you're the person struggling with the addiction, or you're the family member. There are actually many, many, many, many things that you can do to help overcome an addiction or to help your loved one overcome an addiction. And if you're stuck in this idea, it's sort of this, let go, just hand it over. What's going to be is going to be, maybe they'll hit their bottom. Maybe they'll figure it out. It's this kind of like, wait for the miracle thing to happen philosophy. But the problem with that is an addiction will destroy not just you, but your whole family. And so waiting for someone to possibly figure it out and decide that they want to change, it's not always the best way to go. And for those of you struggling with a drug or alcohol addiction, I think if you look deep down inside, you kind of know that there are several things that you could be doing to make the situation better that you're probably not doing. Maybe that's changing the places that you're going or the people that you're hanging around with. Maybe that's getting an accountability system. Maybe that's getting rid of all the stash that you have left. I'll bet that deep down inside, you know that there's a step that you need to be taking and that you know that you're not making progress because you're not taking that step. You see, that's not powerlessness. You do have quite a bit of power and control over it. Maybe not the things that you've been trying to do, those may not be so helpful, but the things, maybe that you've been, like, procrastinating on or putting off or pretending that you don't have to do, those are the steps you need to be taking. What are you not being honest about? And one of the big steps that you can take, it's actually kind of easy and pretty fun, honestly, is you can decide that you're gonna learn more about yourself and figure out who you really are, figure out what's motivating you and what's keeping you stuck. Well, you might get to know yourself better. And you can do this. Whether you are a person struggling with an addiction or you're early in recovery, or you have a family member who's struggled with an addiction. One of the quickest, easiest, and best ways to get started on that is through Truity. Truity is actually an online site that will give you access to tons of online assessments to help you figure out those exact things. Now, Truity is actually a sponsor of this Channel because we love their assessments. My favorite ones to use on Truity are the Enneagram assessment, which many of you already know. I'm a huge Enneagram fan, and that's the one that will help you figure out your personality type. Not only is it going to help you figure out what your personality type, but it's going to help you understand everything about it. What your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, what your core subconscious motivators are. And my other favorite test that you can take on truity is the Love Styles test. If you've ever heard of the love languages. Basically, this test will sort of ask you tons of questions to figure out how you best show other people that you love and care about them and how you really want other people to show you how they love and care about you. Because when you can get the love styles to line up, you can create a much more effective connection. And lots of you already know this, but I feel like connection is the cure for addiction. So if you want to empower yourself to take control of your family and your life, start with this really easy step. I'm going to put the link in the description for the Enneagram test and for the Love Styles test. But there's actually a lot of assessments on there. Those are just my favorite, too. Now, since we're on this journey of figuring out what our philosophy of addiction recovery is, I want you to watch this video next. It's called if Addiction is a Brain disease, why do they say the answer is spiritual? I'm going to put it right up here. All you have to do is click it.
