Easy Does It in Twelve-Step Recovery

Small slogans sometimes deliver big benefits—if used at the appropriate times. One of them is Al-Anon’s “Easy Does It,” and the appropriate times are those when a person’s twelve-step recovery is thwarted or threatened. Like many major life goals, which can include earning a college degree, learning to play an instrument, striving to become fluent in a foreign language, or writing a memoir, reversing the imprints, anxieties, and wounds sustained during prolonged exposure to an alcoholic, a para-alcoholic, or a dysfunctional parent or spouse is a long, rutted, and sometimes-circuitous journey.

The slogan “Easy Does It” is an empowering tool, a gentle remainder, and a gem of wisdom all at the same time, and a person can use it when daily-life circumstances temporarily prove challenging and even insurmountable.

Changing a person and adopting new coping skills and strategies entails a battle between the maladaptive strategies adopted in the past and the replacement of them with healthier skills in the present. Challenging, changing, reversing, and triumphing over them is a Herculean task.

The slogan inherently carries five significant truths.

First and foremost, it bespeaks of self-control and circumstantial assessment.

“When something isn’t working the way I think it should, I can think about the slogan ‘Easy Does It,” according to advice in Al-Anon’s Courage to Change text (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992, p. 115). “Instead of redoubling my effort, I can slow down and reassess the situation.”

Those who suffer from the cumulative effects of childhood alcoholism, abuse, abandonment, and shame tend to become reactive to present-time circumstances, sometimes with the equivalent of a hairpin trigger, and assessing a situation or interaction with someone transfers the thought process from the primitive, reactive brainstem to the logic and reasoning capabilities of the cerebral cortex. That assessment thus becomes an intercept between the two.

The slogan secondly implies understanding a person’s abilities, limitations, and emotional roadblocks toward recovery, and eliminating unrealistic time-interval expectations of when it might occur.

The road to it is not linear and without twists, turns, and traps. Situations will arise, causing the person to trigger, regress, and relapse, most likely to powerless times. And he may feel that he is slipping and taking three steps back. He cannot necessary understand the path his Higher Power is forging to guide him nor the complexities his mind must circumvent to approach, process, recycle, and transcend his past wounds. But progress can be assessed by determining how quickly he bounces back after unexpected obstacles occur, as opposed to concluding that his efforts have been futile.

Another truth expressed by the slogan is that it dispels the inaccuracy that forcing solutions will aid and hasten a person’s recovery. Instead, it will only create the opposite effect, because the person may still have considerable emotional work to complete and because there may be significant issues that have not yet surfaced to tackle.

“We often come to Al-Anon with the philosophy that if something works, it will work even better and faster if we try harder,” according to other advice in Courage to Change (ibid, p. 200). “But Al-Anon involves a long-term process of growth and change. Our efforts to speed up this process are more likely to interfere with it.”

This expresses a paradox—namely, that the more a person forces a solution, the greater will become the problem.

The fifth, final, and, perhaps, deeper significance of the slogan’s philosophy is that slowing down or pumping the brake is only one aspect to it: the other is lightening up and minimizing self-judgment and -assessment.

“’Easy Does It’ suggests not only that I learn to slow down, but also that I learn to lighten up,” Courage to Change further advises (ibid, p. 93). “Today I will strive to take a more accepting attitude toward myself and to enjoy the day, regardless of what I achieve.”

In the end, “Easy Does It” urges a person to exercise patience and continue his journey toward recovery, not interrupt or intercept it.

Robert G. Waldvogel has earned the Interdisciplinary Certificate in Behavioral Health for Late Adolescence and the Emerging Adult and a Postgraduate Certificate in the Fundamentals of Cognitive Behavioral Treatment at Adelphi University’s School of Social Work. He has led Twelve-Step support groups on Long Island for the past decade, and created the Adult Child Recovery-through-Writing, and the Strengthening Our Spirituality Programs taught at the Thrive Recovery Community and Outreach Center in Westbury. He is a frequent contributor to Wisdom Magazine.