053: Terminal Uniqueness | Personal Exceptionalism
Recovery Elevator
Paul
4.7 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2016
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode Dawn, shares how she has made it to 6 months of sobriety as a mother of three. We also discuss terminal uniqueness which basically is when we focus on the differences and not the similarities. I have been culpable of this many times, and I am working on being cognizant of how to avoid this. Here are some of the key reasons why terminal uniqueness is so dangerous.
-It allows people to ignore the likely consequences of their actions
-It provides a false sense of security
-It divides the world into me and them
-It means that the individual will be unwilling to believe that treatments that help other people can help them
-It leads to the individual thinking that they are either worse than everyone else, or that they are better than everyone else
-It prevents the individual from seeking help for their problems
-It can be a barrier to communication
-It leads to feelings of loneliness and desperation (isolation)****
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Recovery Elevator episode 53. |
| 0:02.0 | And then I think my a-ha moment was, you know, when I was drinking again and I'm like, I was just, I knew it was wrong in my head and I knew I was drunk and I knew I was trying to kid everybody else but then I realize I'm just doing this to myself and I feel like shit. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome to the Recovery Elevator Podcast and my name is Paul. Thank you so much for joining us. |
| 0:24.3 | According to the Recovery Elevator sobriety Tracker, I have been sober for 17 months and one week. |
| 0:30.4 | On today's podcast, I've got Dawn. She's 46 years old. She's a mother of three and she's a professional photographer. |
| 0:36.0 | Now, if you were one of the several, and I'm guessing it's many of you guys who heard that introduction of Dawn, and you're like, wait a second, second a she's a woman be she's a mom see she's got three |
| 0:47.4 | kids and she's also a photographer I've got nothing in common with dawn reaching out to my dashboard to hit stop on this |
| 0:54.9 | podcast right now. Actually, this episode is just for you. The topic of today's |
| 1:01.2 | podcast is Terminal terminal uniqueness. |
| 1:04.0 | And I want to thank Ty, who edits the podcast, for bringing this topic to my attention. |
| 1:09.0 | First, I was like, what is terminal uniqueness? |
| 1:12.0 | Well, it's very dangerous, I know this from first-hand experience. |
| 1:15.7 | Recovery support groups typically contain people from all walks of life. |
| 1:19.7 | Either you're NA, NA, basically any 12-step meeting you may come across people from different |
| 1:24.4 | social classes as well as different races and religions. You'll meet people who are young and they're |
| 1:29.2 | old, rich and poor and sometimes people in between. There are going to be criminals in the rooms, there's |
| 1:34.8 | going to be judges, there's going to be street people to royalty. Just about every type of person |
| 1:39.2 | you can imagine can be found in these 12-step meetings. |
| 1:42.8 | If you are new to meetings, you may feel for one reason or another that you don't belong, |
| 1:47.4 | and that there's something different about you compared to the people who are there. |
| 1:50.8 | You may find it hard to relate to the other people in the room. You are feeling |
| 1:54.5 | uncomfortably different and it's caused by your sense of total uniqueness. |
... |
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