How The Fullbrook Center Employs The 12-Step Program
Addiction is a constant battle and is filled with stigma, as it is not viewed as the illness that it is. Shifting a patient’s mentality of believing they are a bad person to an understanding that their addiction is an illness that needs treatment begins with properly explaining the 12-Step Program. At The Fullbrook Center, our goal is to bring awareness to the problem of alcoholism and addiction and provide strength through a viable solution. In our solution-based, 12-Step approach, we dive deep to unravel the habits that block clients from forming an authentic community and spiritual connection, which leads to finding renewed purpose and, ultimately, healing .
Why Step One is Critical for Freedom and Sobriety
Step one of the 12-Step Program is critical to the longevity of freedom and sobriety. In Step one, women are empowered and learn that they are not a bad person, but instead made to understand the concept of their illness. The hard truth of being powerless to an addiction is revealed in this step, but is countered with an explanation of tools and habits that clients learn during recovery. Understanding the powerlessness and unmanageability in step one is not a solution in itself, but a segue into open mindedness and willingness to complete steps 2-12, which will lead women to freedom from the baffling features of alcoholism and addiction. Our goal is for clients to stay sober without having to do it “one day at a time” or by avoiding triggers, and this is achieved by diving deep to find personalized tools that not only treat addiction, but help patients heal from their shame and spiritual malady.
Our Unique Approach to Women’s Treatment
12-Step programs are oftentimes marked by stigma, as many meetings don’t promote healing and treatment as part of the process toward sobriety. Having hard conversations and digging deep into shame and trauma are not part of most programs, as they are at The Fullbrook Center. Other programs promote staying sober one day at a time and focus on the possibility that a relapse can happen at any moment. We are committed to breaking this stigma and revolutionizing the 12-Step Program to equip patients with tools and resources that sustain sobriety and spiritual connection in a more practical way.
At The Fullbrook Center, we introduce the 12-Step Program in a way that the promise of freedom and permanent sobriety is the focus. Shame resilience taught by our clinical team is also incorporated into our treatment model. We wish for patients to build an understanding of the disease of addiction and how to treat it. Empowerment is one of the tools we equip patients with. Building a community of women helping women during treatment assists in the transition of building a community to maintain sobriety outside of treatment. Not only are patients taught the recovery program from staff in recovery, but we highly encourage them to start helping other patients get through the work to help them build confidence in sponsoring women when they leave treatment. We hope for every patient to show up with integrity and respect and give each other accountability, love, and compassion.
Some of The Promises of the 12 Steps:
3rd Step Promises:
“When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs.More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.” -Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Pg. 63
5th Step Promises:
“We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe.” -Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Pg.75
9th Step Promises:
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.” -Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Pg. 83
10th Step Promises:
“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone— even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.” -Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Pg. 84