Spirit of Recovery · Mind Body Spirit.fm

Only We Can Do Our Inner Work

December 6, 2022·35 min·3 clips

Michelle reveals how healing shame-based messages helped her stop projecting flaws onto others.

This episode of Spirit of Recovery focuses on the principle of personal responsibility in addiction recovery and spiritual growth. Hosts Rev. Dan Beckett and Rev. Michelle Vargas, both ordained Unity ministers with personal recovery experience, explore how to own one's sobriety. They argue that blaming external factors for addiction is a barrier to lasting recovery and that individuals must become "fully self-supporting" in their sober journey. The hosts discuss how unhealed shame and a "perfectionism" common in early recovery lead people to project their flaws onto others. Michelle Vargas shares her experience as a "shame-based person" with an inner dialogue of feeling "not good enough," which she traced to early childhood. Dan Beckett identifies with the "thousand forms of fear" from AA literature, describing his specific fear of not understanding social situations as an Enneagram Five. Vargas explains her Enneagram Three's need for external validation and "look good," which made admitting flaws intensely difficult. They connect the process of healing these patterns to the Fourth and Fifth Steps, which involve naming and sharing one's flaws with another person. A key insight is that accepting a loving higher power allows individuals to stop trying to be their own god and embrace their human imperfections. Vargas states that realizing "there is a God and it ain't you" was a profound relief from the burden of perfectionism. The hosts outline a healing framework of awareness, acceptance, and then the ability to choose differently, using Beckett's experience of quitting smoking after eight years of sobriety as a concrete example. They emphasize that resisting or repressing flaws only entrenches them, while bringing them into the light through acceptance begins the healing. They describe the final frontier of healing as learning to love oneself despite one's flaws, not after fixing them, by allowing "God to love me through me." The spiritual path is contrasted with a "muscling through" approach, framed instead as a subtle practice of "allowing," "non-resistance," and "letting go." In a summary segment, Vargas advises that self-sufficiency begins with getting to know oneself through prayer or meditation instead of running from oneself, while Beckett recommends mindfulness practices and the adage, "What other people think of me is none of my business." The tone is conversational, educational, and deeply personal, as the hosts freely share their own struggles and insights from decades of recovery. The style is supportive and reflective, drawing from 12-step principles, Unity theology, and frameworks like the Enneagram. Listeners actively working a 12-step program or interested in the intersection of spirituality and personal accountability will find this episode highly relatable and practical. Those seeking a clinical, secular analysis of addiction or who are uncomfortable with God-centric language may find it less applicable.

As heard by us

A calm recovery conversation about owning the work no one can do for you.

Only We Can Do Our Inner Work keeps its focus on a plain idea: nobody else can do a person's sober work for them. Rev. Dan Beckett and Rev. Michelle Vargas stay close to spirituality and recovery, and they keep circling back to fear, self-awareness, and the value of telling the…

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Why you'd press play

When you need a sober reminder that no one can do your inner work for you.

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