First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem & The Autoimmune Experience
My Dad went through 3 rehabs before I turned 18, and even afterwards when my parents were divorced for years and my Dad had a decent sobriety record under his belt, my Mom never believed that he ever actually got sober. She’d always say, “Well, he hasn’t done his 12 steps, so…,” as she lit her cigarette and preoccupied herself with something else because she was visibly flushed in the face and flustered with the thought of the man even existing. God forbid you remind her that we, her children, were half of him, but I digress.
Ah, the 12 Step Program. Something I, especially at a young age, knew all too well. It felt as normal as the 10 Commandments in a Christian household. Sometimes I got to go with my Dad and I was always so excited to go really only because they had an all-you-can-eat buffet of candy bowls at the table and my Dad would always let me have some of his coffee. He’d always say,
“Shh, don’t tell your Mother.”
Did you know in the 12 Steps, the first step is admitting to yourself that you have a problem? Throughout my autoimmune journey and finding out my diagnosis, that saying kept ringing louder and louder. And at first I couldn’t understand why. I mean, I don’t have a problem, my body has the problem. None of it is my fault, it’s the cards I was dealt. An alcoholic could argue that very same thing, that they don’t have a problem, it’s their genealogy that has the problem or they just needed to let loose, again. They drink because they were given these cards and it’s a way to self medicate, instead of taking accountability for some of the things that they can control in their life. When navigating autoimmune, the trick is how you leverage the cards you were dealt to help yourself understand that you deserve better, and in turn take accountability and take control over your own mindset.
That’s the parallel shift. It’s accountability. Holding yourself accountable for the things you can control, even if life isn’t being kind or fair to you. When you do that, this monster that’s been growing inside of you because of addiction or depression or helplessness, that has been disguising itself as you but isn’t, has unclutched its boney, sharp claws off you, and for a moment you’re free.
As you start to become more aware, the monster will try to belittle your awareness. Gaslight you. And into the darkness you go, swirling into a black endless void, ejecting from your conscious mind. It’s a tough road and even when you get to that point where you’ve defeated the monster, the pieces that you have left to pick up above all is the mental stability to deal with everyday life, how to cope without toxic behavior, and what you’re going to do about the empty void that you have to fill where the monster once was. I’d like to argue that that strife is a worse struggle than getting sober. And in extension,
the strife of grieving the life you had after finally getting diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and trying to find your new purpose and identity after not letting that ugly autoimmune monster rear it’s head to tell you that you’re the victim and there’s nothing you can do is a worse struggle than the autoimmune disease itself.
Especially something like autoimmune, that doesn’t have a start and stop date like sobriety, it’s something that transgresses as you do, that moves and evolves with you. There’s no “conquering” it, so to speak. Instead of finding sobriety in the absence of something you used to use, you’re adapting your life with something, all the while controlling everything you can like your mindset and mental health when you might not be able to control the fact that this autoimmune disease will always be with you.
That’s the parallel. It’s the shift, the change in mindset, the defeating of the “negative monster”, that makes the first step of the 12 Step Program, admitting that you have a problem, parallel to the autoimmune experience. The problem isn’t that it’s your fault that you have an autoimmune. The problem is accepting the fact that you can’t control what it’s going to do, but you can control how it affects you.
All the while.. Eating the candy.