The Maintenance Stage & The Lapse/Relapse Stage with EFT Tapping
In this series articles I have attempted to explain how EFT Tapping can be used in each stage of the Cycle of Change model. This framework is useful to understand how we all change our behaviours and my aim here is to dive into each stage to look at what role EFT can play in addressing the specific challenges to each of them and how it can move us quicker between stages.
The focus of this article are the Maintenance and the Lapse/Relapse Stages.
My argument for addressing them in the same article stems from the reflection that the Lapse/Relapse Stage is part and parcel of the Maintenance Stage, which is to “maintain” the change that we established in the Action Stage. This means examining and resolving whatever presents itself with the view of avoiding lapses (temporary return to old habit) and relapses (longer term return to old habit), or taking measures to decrease the chance that a lapse might happen and/or that a lapse might morph into a full-blown relapse.
How can we do that?
I believe that there are many different recipes to maintain sobriety, but if I had to pick the most important ingredient, the one without which no recipe would work, I would say that its cornerstone would be making the decision to never drink again and drawing a line under it, making it an unwavering fact. Adopting this perspective can give you two tangible benefits:
a. by moving the axis from doing to being, your habit becomes part of your new identity, of who you are, and that can make a dramatic difference, i.e. seeing yourself as being alcohol-free rather than describing it as something that you don’t do
b. by making a conscious contract with yourself that you are not going to question that decision no matter what, by taking off the plate completely even the remote possibility of a decision paralysis, you are giving yourself the second best gift after sobriety, your peace of mind. You have stopped playing games with yourself and making excuses for any possible future behaviour, because you know exactly what would happen if you did, and you have decided that’s not who you are anymore.
In my experience I have noticed that there are three monoliths that need to occupy a prime position if we really want to free ourselves completely from the grip that alcohol might hold in store for us in the future. Seeking the help of a therapist or a sobriety/recovery coach to work through all or some of them might be incredibly worthwhile in the Maintenance Stage.
We tend to believe that once we cut alcohol out of our lives, it will all fall into place. And it will, but it will take some time to readjust to an environment where we have changed but nothing and nobody else has changed with us. As I articulated in my last article, our new shape doesn’t fit anymore with what’s around us, and this realisation might come as a bitter surprise. If we don’t build ourselves up emotionally for a world that holds alcohol is such high regard and as a natural and ubiquitous character, we will leave that resolution to be alcohol-free ready to be chipped away at and, ultimately, disintegrated. This, I would say, is one important piece of the work that usually people have to focus on in their Maintenance Stage.
EFT can be a great modality to accompany you in this journey of self-discovery and can be a great help in redefining yourself in the world as a non-drinker.
One thing that, for example, I have had to tap on to learn how to be okay with in an alcohol-centric world, was the feeling of isolation that I felt as my new way of being set me apart from most people I knew and my consequent perception of not “fitting in” anymore. As Brené Brown very cleverly points out in her work, I needed to find a way to belong to myself because when you do that, you can be yourself wherever you are without betraying your true nature. Some of that work was internal and required for me to change some deep-seethed beliefs; some of it was external as some people quietly left my life and some of that disappointment and sadness had to be processed.
The second important element that we need to keep close tabs on during this stage are all those unpleasant emotions which are nothing but signals of situations that cause us discomfort or stress. We can expect them to seep through in our daily lives, whether it’s at work, in our family, with friends. Those signals were there before but instead of seeing them as they were, alarms that went off to get our attention, they are now becoming more prevalent because we are no longer suppressing them alcohol. All these feelings, and their root causes, can be tapped on to avoid falling again into the trap of resorting to our substance of choice as a way to make them go away.
The third, and equally important piece that a lot of us have had to come to terms with, is grief. Yes, exactly that feeling that embodies the loss that catches us sometimes unexpectedly. Imagine having an entity that has been around you since you were born, a bit like the child of your parents’ best friends you grew up with. You then started to develop a relationship with them. This might have been fun to start with, but turned out to be abusive with time, until you decided to part ways with them for your own good. Despite having made the right decision for yourself, it’s still hard to forget about them and severe the long-term bond that bound you with them. You tell yourself that there were also some good times, that it wasn’t all bad after all, until it was.
This one was particularly hard one for me. And it represented the last rope that I held on to until I was ready to tap on it and let it all go. And the release that I felt afterwards was incredible and a truly cathartic moment for me.
Lapses and Relapses
I would argue that one of the reasons that lapses or relapses occur is because the work that was done in the previous stages, especially in the Maintenance Stage, where we have the opportunity to work through the events or adverse experiences that led us to use alcohol as a coping mechanism and everything else I explored above, was not done thoroughly. Maybe alcohol had not done with us, or, possibly, we didn’t ask for help when that first thought of drinking began to rear its ugly head.
Lapses and relapses do not just happen. They are not like randomly bumping into an ex you had lost touch with. If we play with the same metaphor, perhaps you thought about your ex, even just for a fleeting moment, then you started toying with the idea of seeing them again. Maybe you wouldn’t be actually texting them, but possibly you could just happen to go for a walk in their neighbourhood. A lapse doesn’t just happen. There is always a precursor to it, even if it’s a tiny-teeny minuscule passing thought.
Delving from my own experience, I feel that had I been in therapy in my Maintenance Stage the first time I had stopped drinking, had I have the chance to talk it through with a professional, probably I would have not started again. Or maybe I would have, but at least I would have dug deeper into the why I was contemplating welcoming alcohol in my life again. I would have given myself the opportunity to look at what was missing in my life that I thought alcohol could have granted me. I could have seen what was left unfulfilled for alcohol to find its way in again. Nature abhors a vacuum. If there had not been any vacuum to fill, I would not have relapsed. But the vacuum was there and it got filled.
My advice, if you are thinking about drinking again, is to talk to someone who knows you and has your best interests at heart. Or a professional. They may be the therapist that accompanied you in your previous journey or you can find a new one. Find someone who is objective who has the ability to help you explore your reasons to start using alcohol again. Then, ultimately, if you have not finished with alcohol, and you need to live this through, at least you will do it with awareness and conviction.
And if you happen to lapse, that doesn’t mean that it will turn into a relapse. A lapse can just be a warning of a trigger that you had missed, you can use it to inform you of something that you had overlooked. It doesn’t have to become the rest of your story.
To conclude, I utterly subscribe to what Mark Twain jokingly said about his smoking habit, “Stopping is easy, I have done it hundreds of times”. It’s staying stopped that requires constant work, at least for a certain amount of time. I personally don’t believe that recovery is a forever state of being until death do us part. It can certainly be a mental state of being if you chose it to be. The perception pertains to the individual and is completely subjective. You own it, whichever you want that to be. My experience tells me that if you really dig deep and work through your own stuff, the Maintenance Stage can organically leave its place to the last step of the cycle — Termination.
