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We were using the same kind of language to talk about it: Focusing, centering, in the moment, relaxing, stress-reducing, peaceful.

When a group has been mired in the hostile or helpless mode, and breaks through into work, you’ll see an almost tangible change in tone.

Correlation is not, I repeat not, causation, but it has some value in itself.

It’s just an extremely effective way to establish a reasoned, rational sense of self that is unaffected by crisis and conflict.

Families often think it’s the addict or alcoholic’s emotions that need to be overcome to succeed. But in fact, we need to start by dealing with our own feelings.

We’ve never seen a group that works, right from its inception. Progress toward work usually involves struggle through one or more of these modes.

If you’re not fighting your own conscience, you feel better about yourself, and conflicts with others diminish, too.

They believe that by demonstrating you can’t make them do anything against their will, they’ll convince you that confrontation is useless.

When a group adopts one of these operating modes permanently, as a primary form of interaction, they end up actively resisting any responsibility for achieving individual and group goals.

This is where ‘recovery work’ comes in, in the form of acquiring healthy strategies to successfully handle (i.e., without resorting to substance use) stressful situations and resulting emotions.