Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery

Updated: 07 Jun 2025 • 190 episodes
abphd.com

Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholic's Anonymous, wrote in 1952, "If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand." Wilson suggested that if we could identify and continually surrender these unrealistic and unrecognizable demands, that we may then be able to accomplish what he imagined to be recovery's next frontier - something he called emotional sobriety.   Flash forward 70 years, and join psychotherapists and best-selling authors Thom Rutledge and Dr. Allen Berger, who have taken up the mantle of exploring Bill Wilson's new frontier. Welcome to Emotional Sobriety.

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Samantha was a psychologist before she found recovery, and her experience with the 12 Steps is just one touchstone in her evolving relationship to life in pursuit of greater emotional sobriety. This week she chats with Allen and Thom about her recent experience at Recovery Reimagined in Dublin, what we mean by “Recover

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30 May 2025 • EN

Staying In

Having returned from the second annual Recovery Reimagined conference in Dublin, Patrick reflects on the passing of a longtime sober friend who took his own life. Allen and Thom offer their own professional and personal experiences with suicide, depression and “anti-self”, which maximizes our life’s problems while mini

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Allen, Thom, and Patrick welcome addiction psychiatrist Carl Erik Fisher of Columbia University to discuss emotional sobriety. In the pursuit of “making sense of what happened to him” after his addiction hit a point of critical mass and he decided to seek help, Dr. Fisher wrote The Urge: Our History of Addiction and be

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When we try to wrestle security from life, we often get pinned. Joe Chisholm offers us this:   Dee Hock (1929-2022) wrote:    “Life is not about control; it is not about getting; it is not about having or knowing. It is not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing

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Frequent collaborator and fellow recoverer Julia Heidmann stops by to talk about the role emotional sobriety has played in her relationships with others and herself.   From our friends in Canada:   “Inukshuk, pronounced (in-ook-shook), is a stone monument erected in the image of humans. One of its purposes was to serve

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24 Apr 2025 • EN

Proficiency vs. Perfection

Allen, Thom, and Patrick discuss the overwhelm that often occurs as we return to health, and in so doing take on more challenges in our day to day lives. How do we maintain that sense of balance and proportion without steering into paralysis or unhealthy perfectionism?   Learn more about Joe C., Secular AA and Rebellio

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