Definition of Emotions:
Anything to do with feelings like happiness or anger.
Synonyms of Emotions:
Emotional illness/crises, affected with/stirred by emotion, Etc.
These notes are from recovery in AA and/or related 12 step programs.
Readers are encouraged to click external links for more detail.
We hope you find them helpful.
Love in fellowship.
Emotions Anonymous (E.A.) is a twelve-step program for recovery from mental and emotional illness. EA is a fellowship of men and women who desire to improve their emotional well-being.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to become well emotionally. Emotions Anonymous helps people better understand their emotions and lead a more manageable life
E.A. is not intended to be a replacement for psychotherapy, psychiatric medication, or any kind of professional mental health treatment. Emotions Anonymous views mental and emotional illness as chronic and progressive, like addiction.
E.A. members find they “hit bottom” when the consequences of their mental and emotional illness cause complete despair. Emotions Anonymous focuses on deviant moods and emotions, not just a craving for mood alteration.
The subjective experience of powerlessness over one’s emotions can generate multiple kinds of behavioural disorders, Or it can be a cause of mental suffering with no consistent behavioural manifestation (such as affective disorders). –Emotions Anonymous| More…
Neurotics Anonymous (N/A) is a twelve-step program for recovery from mental and emotional illness. –Neurotics Anonymous | More…
Recovery International is a mental health self-help organization. Recovery’s program is based on self-control, self-confidence, and increasing one’s determination to act. | More…
The causes and classification of mental illnesses are considered irrelevant in the Recovery method.
Temper: Temper is a combination of a feeling and a judgment about oneself or others. The feeling is related to one of the two types of temper, fear or anger.
Will: Free will/The subconscious, as it is known in psychoanalysis, as well as viewpoints emphasizing unconscious motivations, drives, and instincts are considered to be self-defeating.
Environment: Recovery distinguishes between the External Environment, the realities of a situation, and the Internal Environment, one’s own subjective feelings, thoughts, impules, and sensations.
Nervousness: Recovery focuses on treating former mental patients, sometimes referred to as post psychotic persons, as well as psychoneurotic persons.
The principal disorders (neuroses) of members, in order of importance is as follows;
1.Depression (58%)
2.Anxiety (32%)
3.Fears (23%)
4.Problems in relationships (18%)
5.Psychosomatic pains (14%)
6.Confusion (13%)
7.No desire to live (11%)
8.Inability to cope (9%)
9.Nervousness (7%)
10.Loneliness (6%)
11.Feelings of hopelessness (5%)
12.Hate (3%) –Recovery International | More…
Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life. –AA Co-Founder, Bill W., January 1958/”The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety” | More…
Making up all our judgments about events is what creates all our emotional turmoil in the first place. –Hazelden | More…
The colours of the rainbow are like all the different feelings we have. Let’s say red is anger and green is fear and orange is joy and violet is contentment.
All these feelings create a whole person, in the same way that all these colours make the whole rainbow. We become more colourful people as we learn to express all our emotions. –Today’s Gift | More…
We couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression. –Daily Reflections | More…
Emotional balance is very much like balancing on a bicycle — it is more a matter of what I don’t do than what I do …Grapevine | More…
Our emotions bless us, in reality. They enrich our experiences.
They serve as guideposts on the road we’re traveling. How we “feel” at any single moment flags the level of our security, how close we are to our higher power, the level of our commitment to the program.
They serve us well when acknowledged. On the other hand, when ignored or denied, they can immobilize us, even defeat us. –Each Day a New Beginning/Karen Casey | More…
Emotion literally means ‘ disturbance’ from the Latin removere, meaning ‘to disturb.’ Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being.
They have no opposite because they arise from beyond the mind. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. –The Power of Now/Eckhart Tolle p.23-25 | More…
Learning self-acceptance, and then loving the selves we are, present perhaps our two biggest hurdles to the attainment of emotional and spiritual health. Fortunately, they are not insurmountable hurdles. The program offers ready assistance.
Emotional and spiritual health are gifts promised by the program, when we work it. We must move beyond our perfectionism and relish our humanness. And the Steps are the way.
We must learn humility and develop faith, and the Steps are the way. Learning to love all our parts, the qualities we like and the traits that discouragingly hang on, offers a new freedom.
A freedom that invites change. A freedom that safeguards the emotional and spiritual well-being that we strive for. –Each Day A New Beginning/Karen Casey | More…
We become grateful for emotions in our lives if we place them in their proper perspective. The ability to feel our emotions is one of the greatest gifts of recovery –Just for Today | More…
EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY
Emotional sobriety pushes sobriety from simply abstaining to creating a deeper emotional balance. This is new dimension in recovery that many never knew existed.
What determines if something is wrong with our recovery is how we respond to what is happening. If we know how to respond, we can avoid becoming emotionally stunted on the sobriety journey.
The problem is not the problem. The problem is how we cope with the problem.
The good news is we can always grow from experience. In order to grow from experiences, we need to learn how to claim our experience instead of letting our experience claim us.
Learn from the past, and then get the hell out of there!”
When we work toward emotional sobriety, we re-experience traumas, and we can begin to digest and resolve them. We will take what can help us grow from the experience and eliminate the rest.
In order to grow from a traumatic experience, we need to go back and relive those situations; feel those emotions. But this time, take care of the unfinished business.
The bottom line is that throughout our sobriety we need to trust ourselves. We are wired to complete unfinished business, to move toward wholeness.
We need to get out of our own way: to let go and let God. Recovery is not just about sobriety, it is the discovery of new possibilities and identity beyond “alcoholic or addict”. –Allen Berger | More…
Our emotions bless us, in reality. They enrich our experiences. They serve as guideposts on the road we’re traveling. How we “feel” at any single moment flags the level of our security, how close we are to our higher power, the level of our commitment to the program. They serve us well when acknowledged. On the other hand, when ignored or denied, they can immobilize us, even defeat us. –Each Day a New Beginning | More…
MORNING HELPERS 