This book presents a bold new vision of psychotherapeutic healing. This type of therapy is called An Authentic Process Toward Complete Recovery or simply “Authentic Process Therapy.” It has organically grown out of my personal experience, the experiences of my clients, the countless workshops I’ve conducted over the years, the wisdom of the maturing recovery movement, and insights from diverse cultural perspectives.

Authentic Process Therapy (APT) is a significant healing approach for all human beings who want to enrich their lives. It is not just for addicts, ex-addicts, and those who identify themselves as adult survivors of a traumatic childhood. While the research comes from the reclaiming of health, happiness, and fulfillment for the most broken of us, the application of these healing strategies is beneficial to every person seeking a richer life. Those who have experienced the depths of despair have used these healing techniques, emerging from their personal process with profoundly illuminating insights for all of us. APT is a multi-staged system for recovering your emotional, psychological, cultural, spiritual and sexual wholeness through community healing. The goal (also, the result, I trust) of your commitment to the process is complete recovery, or holism as described in Chapter One.

What makes Authentic Process Therapy bold, new and distinct from other modes of healing? I feel that there are several important factors:

• It was developed out of the experience of those being healed, rather then from an academic or medical perspective.
• It incorporates from many disciplines and cultures that which has consistently demonstrated the ability to effect transformational change.
• It incorporates the “community healing approach“ used in addictions recovery (Twelve-Step, Therapeutic Communities, etc.) but shifts the focus to breaking down the barriers to feeling whole and complete experienced by all people.
• It merges clinical, scientific, and psychotherapeutic discoveries and places them within the spiritual community context.
• The healing process is clearly defined from the onset. This awareness of the “big picture“ of one’s journey brings comfort and grace to the healing. However, it allows unlimited flexibility providing for individual adaptation.
• The personal “powers“ and tools required for the journey are described in simple terms.
• The process is pragmatic because anyone who dedicates themselves to the journey will experience concrete results with each engagement.

At the heart of this new vision is the healing technique which itself is called Authentic Process. In this approach, the therapist/facilitator, operates without clinical distance. The facilitator teaches an efficient system of healing while simultaneously guiding individuals through their own process. Therapists and clients work together without hierarchy towards mutual authenticity and community. Everything is discussed, nothing is hidden. It is not esoteric in nature, not elitist, and not “medical.“ People are simply encouraged to speak from the heart.

Authentic Process is one of the “Four Powers That Dissolve Barriers to Complete Recovery“ that are available in APT. These powers are:

1. The Power of Community-based Healing
2. The Power of Shared Intentionality
3. The Power of Shared Belief
4. The Power of Authentic Process.

There are markers or navigational points that help us steer our course on our journey toward complete recovery. Eleven of them are in Stage One (outlined in Chapter Two) and twelve more in Stage Two (fully described in Chapters Six and Seven). I call these markers “stations.” In doing so I seize upon the paradoxical definitions of the word “station.” It can mean an “assigned post or position where a person stands,” and can also have the transitional meaning of “a stopping place along a route.” Both meanings apply. Each station has a transitional nature in that you move in and out of it time and again. At the same time each station also creates an experiential foundation that serves as an emotional platform. Imagine a space station that is designed to become the hub for future expansion. You can move among the stations and return to any one of them again and again as you continue your transformation.

Please avoid confusing the Twelve Stations of Stage Two with the Twelve Steps of AA and similar programs, or the twelve stations on the way to crucifixion in Catholicism. While all three philosophically suggest a death-rebirth experience, the common number of twelve is “coincidental” — or perhaps synchronicity.

The fact that I have been in focused co-creation of these concepts for fourteen years does not mean that other therapists are not doing similar work. I am happy to report that more and more of my colleagues are finding their own way to comparable healing approaches. What this book does is offer a map of the journey for the traveler. I use the metaphor of a tree to help present this map. To draw on that metaphor for a moment, you could say that Authentic Process Therapy is at the present time in its sapling stage of development. The living application of this healing, in the form presented in this book, is only four years old. The exciting results are being demonstrated at The Institute for Staged Recovery in New York City which was founded for this purpose. The Institute creates psychospiritual community workshops for individuals who desire to heal into wholeness and has already begun to train therapists to facilitate this process. This sapling will sprout deeper roots as more individuals intuitively, organically, and serendipitously draw to it and take root with it.

About the New Edition

The first hardcover edition of this book, entitled Complete Recovery: An Expanded Model of Community Healing, was primarily used as support for the “Getting Where You Want To Go” workshops we conduct at the Institute. These workshops gave me an opportunity to see the synergy of these ideas and experiences in action, setting the stage for a concise revision of the book for major distribution. By observing people using the book interactively, I could see the benefit in making the text less theoretical and more grounded in concrete, everyday terms. This has been accomplished. Much new material has been added from the workshop process and from the lives of the participants as well.

Also, in the earlier edition I chose not to share some important aspects of myself. At the time of the first writing, the ideas synthesized were so commanding that I felt these personal stories were less important and perhaps distracting from the main theme. I later realized that they are germane. I happen to be living as a gay man (though I feel much more complex than that label generally implies) who is HIV positive. Technically speaking, I have had AIDS since 1983, survived two cancers, intensive chemotherapy, numerous complications and surgeries, and a near-death experience; however, today I am blessed with health and vitality.

As the first edition of this work went to press, I had a heart attack (totally unrelated to my other health conditions) with accompanying triple bypass surgery. I have also lost two life partners, one female and one male, and many friends whom I dearly loved to AIDS. I have been both numbed and awakened by those losses. I share all this with you because I want you to know that the fragility of this experience we call life rarely escapes me. I have an ongoing desire for the recovery and enrichment of the human spirit and feel a deep pressing concern and compassion for our species and our world. With this comes a fascination with the nature of human consciousness. To me, nothing could be more interesting than the heart and mind and how they work.

The honest representation of my own sexual diversity is essential to the understanding of this healing work, as it was central to its creation and development. Certainly, this does not mean that one has to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual to benefit from this empowering journey; quite the contrary is true. All human beings can reclaim their emotional, spiritual, and sexual wholeness by engaging in the healing stations outlined in this book. What’s important is to acknowledge that the many years of research and development this book represents were carried out by a population which was approximately 80 percent sexually diverse (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), while the remaining 20 percent were heterosexually self-identified.

There is a natural and historic inclination toward new and experimental healing and transformative practices within the sexually diverse community. Not only have they been oppressed and misunderstood by the conventional healing and spiritual establishments, they have born the scars of all oppressed people: with a high rate of drug and alcohol abuse, as much as three times the national average. It is now three decades since the “sexual revolution” which marked the beginning of the gay liberation and feminist movements (which have become so much more than anyone suspected at the time). It is time that all sexual beings, whatever our present orientation and gender, completely drop the shackles of shame as we enter a new age where new forms of healing will become more important. Sexually diverse people have always been out front in the world of new ideas. They can reconcile polarities at each of the important crossroads and bring fresh perspectives and sensitivities to relationship, gender and cultural biases. In some Native American cultures, they were referred to as the berdache, winkte, or two-spirit people. In many indigenous cultures, they were the healers and seers of the existing and emerging order.

In some Native American traditions, sexually diverse people were the shamans, and when they were not the shamans they were often sought out by shamans for advice. Anthropologist and Fulbright scholar Walter Williams, in his book The Spirit and the Flesh says: “The berdache received respect partly as a result of being a mediator.... Since they mix the characteristics of both men and women, they possess the vision of both. They have double vision, with the ability to see more clearly than a single gender perspective can provide. This is why they are often referred to as `seer,’ one whose eyes can see beyond the blinders that restrict the average person.... By the Native American view, someone who is different offers advantages to society precisely because she or he is freed from the restrictions of the usual.”

The point being made is that it is natural for gay and lesbian developments in healing and recovery to bear fruit for all people. The healing experience being offered to all in this book is a gift from the entire recovering community with special insights and contributions from its sexually diverse brothers and sisters. Together, we constitute the whole — the healing is for all.

Likewise, though I feel that my own struggle with drugs and alcohol was the central impetus to develop this work, you do not have to have a primary addiction or Twelve-Step experience to be “in recovery.“ You must merely recognize the potential in your life for greater authenticity of expression and interaction with the world around you, and be willing to examine the wounds that isolated you to begin with. Fortunately, as this book goes to press, a transformation and expansion in the meaning of the word “recovery” is occurring worldwide.

In making the distinction between addictions recovery and the larger recovery of spirit that this book addresses, let me share my perspective and where it comes from. I do not speak for or represent any Twelve-Step program, but as one informed voice from the center of the vortex that we have come to call addictions recovery. In that I have been a grateful member of a Twelve-Step addictions program for more than twenty years, my voice has been influenced by my own recovery, the recovery of others, and years of experiential and psychospiritual research that led to my doctorate in “The Psychology of Addictions Psychotherapy.”

To make this new nomenclature work, we need to separate the process in to two distinct stages: primary and complete recovery. I see primary addictions recovery as the recovery from life-threatening, involuntary attachments to alcohol, drugs, food, sex, and gambling (depending on circumstances, other cravings may also be considered primary if they are life-threatening). The healing from a primary addiction requires a committed, singular focus for at least one to two years, more for some. In this book, Stage One recovery addresses this healing and honors the Twelve-Step and other recovery programs. The healing of a primary addiction is the dissolving of the first barrier to the complete recovery of spirit.

Expanding now beyond primary addictions, we acknowledge other involuntary habitual behaviors, thinking, and feelings that are roadblocks or barriers to the fullness of who we are. In a humorous way, you might think of them as heavy pieces of luggage; suitcases filled with medieval suits of armor, swords, flintlock rifles, Winchester repeaters, and a selection of dueling pistols. These very heavy suitcases are hinderances to our completing the journey; to our full self-expression, the shame-free presentation of ourselves, the intimacy we seek, and the gift of serenity which is inherent in our spiritual existence. (When I say “spiritual” I mean the joy of feeling our spirit connecting with the spirit of others, nature, and our universe.) I speak here of cultural, behavioral, psychological, and emotional addictions. You might recognize them as codependence, self-diminishing thinking, depression, self-sabotaging behavior, underachieving, over-achieving, physical self-injury, fear of encroachment, fear of abandonment, negative projections, being sexually unfulfilled, lacking love, black and white or right and wrong thinking, and all other outer manifestations of internalized dilemmas. All of these, and more, are highly injurious defensive weapons, outdated and heavy, burdens that keep us from what we want the most: mutual trust, love, and respect.

By definition, complete recovery includes freedom from all the above. We drop the armor and weaponry piece by piece, compassionately understanding why they were necessary in bringing us to our present ground of being. We come to see all addictions, personal as well as cultural ones, as ways the organic system creates equilibrium and a feeling of safety when faced with chaotic, traumatic conflicts beneath the conscious surface. We learn that with education and “inner statesmanship,” these underlying conflicts can present themselves for healing. As we are able to make it “okay” for them to come out of hiding, our aliveness grows with each exposure and addictions fall away. Keep in mind that until the underlying chaos is released and cleared up, our inner defense system will update old addictions and defenses with other primary or secondary addictions, to keep equilibrium, or to keep up the imagined balance of power. Although this is progress, the real work is always the spiritual, cognitive, emotional work that changes the addictive state to the holistic one.

Making the connection between the struggle for freedom from addiction and the struggle for spiritual freedom in our lives is a big jump for some. But that is where many of us have come to on the journey, and can’t turn back. Recently, I was invited to speak at a Unitarian-Universalist church on Authentic Process Therapy. When I was asked what the title of my talk would be, the words “Recovery of Spirit“ came mysteriously from my mouth. At that pivotal moment in the process, all my thinking and feeling shifted from “recovery from” addictions and childhood trauma, to “recovery of” fulfillment, wisdom, serenity, and emotional, spiritual and sexual wholeness.

I could no longer comfortably talk in terms of “recovery from,“ and from then on the term “recovery of“ seemed like a natural evolution. Everyone at the institute felt immediately at home with this new perspective. Suddenly and spontaneously, everything had been turned right side up. We felt ourselves moved from a problem-oriented process to a solution-oriented process. It was (and still is) refreshing.

Even more important, our journey now feels inclusive for our brothers and sisters who never had a primary addiction problem or Twelve-Step experience. They had been coming to workshops also wanting help and inspiration in their search for meaning, purpose, and intimacy in their lives. The dynamic energy of the “recovery from” movement had lured them, yet they often felt slightly out of place. Now, with this incredible, spontaneous transformation, the “recovery from” movement has matured and expanded to fully include them and the “recovery of” process they know they must undertake.

What is Complete Recovery?

The definition of complete recovery continues to grow and expand with each person who adopts it as their process. In the essential experience of complete recovery: 1. we integrate many of the split-off aspects of ourselves so that we feel whole; 2. we reclaim our emotional, spiritual, and sexual wholeness; 3. we present ourselves to the world free of toxic shame; 4. we experience a rich open-hearted spiritual connection with ourselves, others, and the pulse of the universe; and 5. we identify more with our spirit than with our conditions, realizing that we are always larger than whatever our present challenges may be.

At the core of complete recovery is a state of being that is in a constant, conscious evolutionary process of completing itself. To the best of our ability we stay up to the moment in taking care of our inner and outer needs, continually discovering what those needs are. In this state one makes an effort to appropriately and authentically express the fullness of oneself. One knows what it is to have an open heart, and is conscious of when, how and where one chooses to experience this opening. In Chapter Eight you will read about the many rewards of this journey, each one continuing to define aspects of complete recovery, although your own definition will ultimately be more important than any that I may give you. I encourage people to make this term their own and define it as they wish.

I’m aware that the concept of complete recovery may be jarring to those currently in programs based on total abstinence. The concept does not mean that one is cured of addictive tendencies but rather that one feels complete and whole as a human being, a being who is entitled to the joy of living and who can be authentic and sincere in their expression of it. This occurs when we have accepted and corrected unconscious self-delusions and integrated the many aspects of the self.

In the Twelve-Step programs it is said that anonymity is the spiritual foundation for each program, a tradition born in Alcoholics Anonymous. In Authentic Process Therapy, the foundation is the ongoing desire for completion, for feeling complete and whole and resolved concerning this lifetime and our purpose for being here. That is the binding spiritual glue that brings us together and makes the healing possible.

I sometimes think of this feeling of completion as always being prepared for the possibility of my demise. Have I done everything I needed to do? Are my relationships up-to-the-moment and emotionally complete to the best of my ability? Asking these questions helps us focus on our life as a whole to see exactly what remains unresolved. Far from being a death-wish, it is a buoyant freedom to live with. It is a gift I received from my several encounters with my mortality.

The following “promises” are excerpted from Alcoholics Anonymous, the pivotal book that galvanized AA and inspired the other Twelve-Step programs:

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
economic insecurity will leave us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing
for us what we could not do for ourselves.

I, and many others in Twelve-Step programs, fully realized these promises only when we expanded our recovery objectives. Authentic Process Therapy is an expanded perspective which offers these additional tools.

In Authentic Process Therapy, we also expand on these promises: We will know true intimacy, and connect in meaningful ways with others. We will finally heal the schism between our spiritual and sexual nature. Fear of authority figures will disappear as we put our faith in an inner, higher authority. In presenting ourselves shame-free to the world, we will discover our purpose for being. We will realize that God is the Great Spirit within us and beyond us. When we open our hearts we will know that we are the Spirit, represented in an energetic feeling we call love. We will experience and know the feeling of complete recovery.

Similar to the Twelve-Step path to healing, this is a journey of attraction; grab onto it if it feels like a clear, safe, and secure path to where you want to go. Or, if you are lost and this direction seems more suitable for you than others, climb aboard. Bring yourself to it only if it feels right to you, and even then, take what works for you and leave what does not, remembering we all have different needs at different times. There is no right or wrong way to grow and evolve — there is only your way.

Today, recovering people are finding the emotional freedom to experience intimacy, joy, creativity, feelings of accomplishment, serendipity, and connection with spirit through Authentic Process Therapy. This freedom to experiment with joy is a giant step beyond traditional definitions of recovery; it is something many “normal” or “healthy” people have difficulty with.

These same techniques which empower former addicts toward states of wholeness and happiness can likewise work wonders for those outside of the recovery community who somehow feel empty and unfulfilled. People with chemical or process addictions and those whose addictions are less obvious can benefit equally from this process. For example, we all mix together things that should be clearly separated, such as adult needs and childhood needs, and separate as contradictory things that should remain connected, such as spirituality and sexuality. To reach deep enough within to be able to re-sort and redefine these concepts is the main milestone in Authentic Process Therapy.

My own evolution towards developing this approach has been a long, painful, and rewarding one, working through my own blocks, blind spots, and addictions, as well as those of hundreds of clients. I wasn’t satisfied with mere self-control, and realized there was another step, and another, and yet another. Peeling back the layers of self-deceptions I went through many stages of recovery, as did my clients. Somewhere along the line, the paradigm shifts, and many of us end up in a place we don’t expect to be. This new “place” seems to be a holistic state of being, rooted where we are in our lives, but being connected to a much greater whole; optimally capable of dealing with joy, bliss, serenity and creativity, as well as emotional traumas, loss, disease and injury. This text reflects that evolution.

As we journey toward complete recovery, the self expands to include our larger world and universe. The healing of this new transpersonal self occurs when one nears completion of their own personal biographical healing, the point at which the blocks to perceiving that holistic connection with life finally dissolve, and our own healing merges with the transformation of the world around us. Complete recovery, then, involves the shame-free presentation of the self through community healing, the experience of personal wholeness, and finally the transpersonal breakthrough into what I call “holism.”

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