“You Can’t Make Me Angry:” Typical, Terrible 12 Step Advice
Popular program advice says to ignore your healthy emotional instincts, and to just accept the bad things that happen to you, and the bad things that people do to you. That's bad advice. Build healthy boundaries, reject shame and abuse, and tell the truth when you experience exploitation inside the 12 Step circle.
When I was much younger, a family member of mine attended a generic 12 Step program at church—Celebrate Recovery, I think. He enjoyed it a lot, because it really resonated with his Christian upbringing.
When my family member went to his generic, Christian 12 Step program (for some kind of spiritual recovery?), he came back with some odd advice one day.
“You can’t make me angry.”
If you’re Christian, or from a Christian culture, you might notice that a lot of 12 Step culture is very similar to Christianity. That’s because it was designed by practicing Christians so that it could be used by anyone.
Even though 12 Step programs have a massive failure rate (around 95% of AA members drop out before they finish their first round of the Steps) it was promoted so heavily by teetotalers and tyrants that it took root in the American imagination.
Today, the 12 Steps are everywhere, used by volunteer-based nonprofits, professionally-run addiction recovery programs, probation offices, and even churches that re-Christianize the 12 Steps. Somewhere out there is a '12 Steps Without God' group, I'm pretty sure.
Unfortunately, the 12 Steps are often adopted and adapted by nonprofessionals and volunteers to be used in environments that are not safe for participants, and are even predatory. On purpose.
The “12 Traditions” which originally sustained the 12 Step fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous were written ambiguously, on purpose.
The original goal of the 12 Step fellowship was to enable anyone to participate, as long as they had an agenda to combat the vice of “drinking.”
Bill Wilson, the creator of the 12 Steps, was called "the greatest social architect" of his century, and had a close association with the Freemasonic Brotherhood; his partner, Robert Smith, was a member of record. His circle of advisors, who helped him craft the Steps and Traditions, were Catholic members of the Oxford Group—the grandchild of the Oxford movement—which was an interfaith alliance associated with both the Catholic and Anglican High Church movements, with Methodist affiliates throughout the States.
The rise of the Alcoholics Anonymous program followed the repeal of the 18th Amendment—Prohibition.
America could drink again.
Alcoholics Anonymous was, very suddenly and swiftly, a new venue where church networks and other socially-interested reform groups (and their moms) could discretely monitor people with a drinking problem.
Today, the same deliberate loophole is replicated in other programs, like SAA, SA, NA, MA, and so on.
Programs like this which are anonymous, nonprofessional, and open to the public are easily exploited by volunteers with private social agendas towards religious reform.
The original anti-vice agenda of the 12 Steps, buried in ambiguous language and packaged as therapy for addicts, has given rise to an entire culture of parallel programs.
Various anti-vice groups may discretely datamine the men and women who come to them for help, in environments where volunteers with social or religious agendas may hide their own identities, in circles where no information is legally shielded by anything more than non-binding “traditions” of anonymity.
Behind the front-face of America's deeply religious institutional life are a number of traditions with well-established cultures of homeopathic, spiritual treatments for moral disorders, which are an open secret, and frequently referenced in film and other popular media.
Swedenborgianism, Jungianism, the New Thought Movement, Rosicrucianism, the Freemasons, and others are all united around the notion that people may be ambushed, overwhelmed, and then cured with their own vice. Like Israel, in the wilderness, bitten by snakes and cured by the Bronze Serpent. Spiritual homeopathy.
In practice, this means overwhelming alcoholics with bad advice about alcoholism, so they hit rock bottom. It means breaking apart codependent couples by over-enmeshing them until they cannot stand each other. It means getting sex addicts so deeply involved in their sex addiction that they cannot stomach any more sex. Like getting a kid to smoke so many cigarettes he’ll never smoke again.
In the 60s this practice was formally introduced to the public and clinically licensed as a psychological discipline called transpersonal psychology, or sometimes integral psychology, in a network of private universities, coast to coast. Just before that? They called in Jungianism, in a method of spiritual psychology based on theory psychic energy transmitting images to humanity’s collective consciousness—which allowed large groups of people to share information discretely in the name of a religious crusade.
But the Craft goes much further back than that. Today, plunging someone into a devastating crisis on purpose for therapeutic reasons is part of what is called a "spiritual emergency," or a spiritual crisis.
In the past, these forced events were called vastation (short for devastation) in the Swedenborgian tradition, or even a healing crisis by homeopaths and psychospiritual “alchemists.”
Carl Jung was instrumental in modernizing the psychology of homeopathy and alchemy in the 1940s and 50s, as AA was getting off the ground; Alan Watts and a few other colorful gurus helped launch transpersonal culture in the 60s and 70s after Jung passed from the scene in 1961, and the academic field was being manufactured.
AA’s circles of recovery were an organic arena for unregulated spiritual emergencies to be staged.
In many places, America’s spiritual emergency culture and the 12 Step machine is an underground secret people chuckle about.
Have you seen the movie Fight Club?
It’s literally about free 12 Step programs, and psychopaths hurting each other in a circle to repair their damaged sense of repressed and emasculated masculinities.
What about the movie Renfield? A vampire’s familiar hunts for victims inside a 12 step codependency group, because that’s where you find assholes who deserve to be hurt.
12 Step programs aren’t just a place where volunteers, priests, and law enforcement can sit and observe the ongoing confessions and behaviors of individuals and couples.
In 12 Step programs, volunteers, priests, and law enforcement are free to give addicts bad advice on purpose, in order to make their addictions or their relationships worse and worse, with the intention of making their lives so bad that they are trapped and dependent on their recovery programs for help.[1] This is what transpersonal psychologists call a spiritual emergency.[2]
That’s where my family member got his advice from—he wasn't in the middle of a real spiritual emergency, but his 12 Step program made him feel like it.
12 Step programs are built on unearthing all your shame, and handing it all over to a group, and letting them shame you into submission and codependency with the group mind as your new God-conscience.
Its a bad program, is what I'm saying.
But the 12 Steps do sound Christian, if you really believe Christ wants you to never get angry and to always accept evil.
“You can’t make me angry… and acceptance is the solution to all my problems.”
That’s staple advice from 12 Step volunteer personality Paul O. He’s not an official 12 Step representative. He’s just… some random guy who died 20 years ago. But his non-professional advice in his posthumously-published book is well-promoted by the 12 Step machine, and it's got a lot of likes on Amazon, so you know it's legit.
And people who review his book swear that if you follow this nonprofessional advice from this AA volunteer, you’ll definitely recover your… emotional sobriety.
It’s definitely not a book filled with bad advice from reformers about stuff they're not qualified to teach.
Let’s break down both halves of that totally not intentionally-bad advice.
1) You can’t make me angry.
That sounds normal, right? Anger is always unhealthy, no matter what?
Some people have anger problems, and need to work on that. Some people are rage-aholics, for sure. They should probably go see a professional therapist who is not a transpersonal therapist.
But anger is a normal emotion—it’s a defense mechanism that tells a human person when they are in danger of being hurt, either emotionally or physically, or even spiritually.
Healthy anger is supposed to trigger a defense response.
That's why you feel angry when you hit your head. Your body is telling you to duck. A low-hanging doorway can trigger an anger response: defend yourself, you moron!
If someone starts smashing babies in front of you, you should feel anger. If you don’t feel anger, you might be a sociopath.
Other people CAN make you angry.
It’s a normal human reaction.
You are a normal human being.
If someone betrays your deepest trusts inside a 12 Step circle as part of a crazy "homeopathic" effort to cure you, you SHOULD feel angry. Don't accept it: defend yourself!
Suppressing your anger in a situation where someone has done something vile to you or the people you love is a mistake.
Convincing someone to suppress their anger when they should be enraged—abusing the language of sobriety, inside a sobriety program—is a hallmark sign of abusive gaslighting.
A resource like You Can’t Make Me Angry is an ideal resource for a spiritual predator or gaslighter, a bully who is trying to convince their victim to cooperate with their abuse, and to suppress their anger when they should be fighting back.
12 Step programs can make unhealthy demands of time, energy, and interpersonal connection. If someone pressures you to ignore your healthy anger, or to ignore something disgusting because program "tradition" says to, don't be afraid to stand up and say enough is enough.
Establish healthy boundaries.
Speak out.
Saying nothing means that your abusers are free to target the next victim the same way that they targeted you.
In its title and tagline, You Can't Make Me Angry tells its readers that they are doing a good thing by rolling over for abusive practices.
It's intended audience? Addicts already eager to please their sponsors and their recovery community.
2) Acceptance is the answer to all my problems.
This is the legit, for real, magical-solution-thinking advice that Dr. Paul O. offered to addicts everywhere, which a buuuunch of absolutely real and sincere reviewers on Amazon—who definitely don't belong to any lodges or reform groups—swear is very legit.
Paul O. was an alcoholic, for decades. Then he stopped drinking, totally. And probably, very suddenly.
Totally.
He was not a psychiatrist, or a therapist, but a pharmacist.
Who suddenly couldn’t use pills, either.
So he changed careers and spent the next twenty years treating alcohol and pill addiction. With pills.
Then, just before he died, he wrote this very-not-medical book about emotional sobriety, at the age of 81, in which he describes himself as a crabby, sad, mean old man who has trouble staying balanced, in the introduction.
And he called it, You Can’t Make Me Angry.
I’m pretty sure the working title, originally, was I Am Rubber, You Are Glue.
It's not a good book, is what I'm saying.
He died before it was published, and the 12 Step machine took over.
This book describes getting angry as an emotional “slip.” Like strong defensive emotions are drugs. Don’t get high on defending yourself.
Obviously, do not buy this book. Emotional children love it, because it tells them that they are superheroes that cannot get hurt.
In reality, you are not actually Batman or Superman, invincible against emotional pain... but it is nice to pretend that ignoring your pain makes you stronger. Like a stoic warrior in Athens. Or. This. Is Sparta.
So this terrible advice? It’s used everywhere by 12 Step program volunteers who plan on hurting people to make themselves and others feel stronger. Like secret warriors, in a fight club, instead of injured children hurting other emotional children.
12 Step programs and volunteers everywhere swear that the advice in this book is good advice.
The tenor of Paul O.'s advice is that, if you are unhappy, it’s because you are not willing to accept some unpleasant reality in your life, which you are not able to change. Accept it. Just accept it. Accept it. Accept it. Tell your wife not to be mad either. She should be emotionally mature too. Just like that Jesuit priest told her. This definitely is all your fault. Just accept it. Don't be mad at the people doing this to you. Accept it. Accept it.
This definitely-not-clinically-verified advice mimics the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and... something something something.
So it immediately sounds spiritual, as if, by accepting some difficult situation you have been dropped into unexpectedly, you are complying with very high program ideals.
In radically accepting what is happening, you may feel like you are doing what the 12 Step program taught you to do, from the moment you got there.
So someone in a 12 Step program could say something like, “I know it seems weird that your life has gone to crap after you gave us all your secrets and trusted us with all your vulnerabilities and we lied to you for months and months or even years and years and then SURPRISE! ... But, you know, emotional sobriety means never getting angry is a sign of emotional maturity... and radical acceptance means cooperating with anything anyone does to you and your family."
Anything.
Accept anything.
And for a minute you might be tempted to nod and say yes because Paul O. the AA Pharmacist said so, in a book that has a bunch of positive reviews. And you really want that 30-Day chip to show your wife, who has been very patient after all.
Stop.
You’re being stupid.
Imagine that you are being raped by a horde of psychopaths in the dark in exchange for some meaningless trinket they dangled as bait.
You can just radically accept what is happening to you.
Now imagine you can stop what is happening to you, by telling the truth, and just walking away.
Program traditions are not legally binding.
Program traditions aren’t even morally binding.
Literally, the 12 Steps and 12 Tradition are just double-speak code written so that you could be exploited and shamed by people substituting themselves for your Higher Power when you’re not looking.
Telling the truth is always an option. You are not required to submit to a low moral order because a group told you to.
Acceptance is not the solution to your all your problems.
“Courage to change the things you can” is the next part of that Serenity Prayer.
You need enough wisdom to know the difference.
[1] “This also leads to some concerns about my assumption that there are advantages to encouraging greater self-expansiveness through identification with a larger range of that with which it is possible for one to identify. It can also be argued conversely, in my perspective, that perhaps “disidentification” would be a better strategy to pursue for transpersonal healing and growth. The self-concept can be deconstructed in the process of disidentification until there is nothing left that can be construed as constituting the self. This alternate strategy to self-expansiveness is used in some psychotherapies (e.g., Assagioli, 1965) and in some traditional meditation practices (e.g., Maharshi, 2008). However, I believe that taken to the extremes, an identification with the All, or a complementary disidentification leading to the Void, might merge together in the same destination.” Harris L. Friedman, “Transpersonal Self-Expansiveness as a Scientific Construct,” in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, eds. Harris L. Friedman and Glenn Hartelius (Wiley Blackwell: West Sussex, United Kingdom, 2015), 213. Big words to hide evil concepts of dissolving the self in a group so the group can rebuild the person. Because that's how transpersonals roll.
[2] Transpersonal psychology has shown how these crises are a kind of nonpathological developmental crisis that can have powerfully transformative effects on a person’s life when supported and allowed to run their course to completion. The idea of spiritual emergency has gained prominence in the last decade. It includes phenomena ranging from the opening up to psychic or paranormal abilities to the emergence of various kinds of altered states of consciousness. Spiritual emergency was once dismissed by the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic establishment as merely a form of mental illness, requiring immediate medication and hospitalization in order to end it as soon as possible. This misdiagnosis and mistreatment aborted an otherwise growthful process of psycho-spiritual change. There have been numerous reported cases of individuals having their process frozen through medication and attendant psychiatric treatment. When the process becomes suspended like this, the individual is unable to complete the process and ends up feeling shamed and hurt by the misdiagnosis and mishandling, sometimes feeling doomed to having a lifelong mental illness that is actually but an artifact of this iatrogenic mistreatment.” Brant Cortright, “An Integral Approach to Spiritual Emergency,” in Integral Psychology: Yoga, Growth, and Opening the Heart (State University of New York Press: Albany, New York, 2007), 188. Yes. He is serious. You drive people crazier and crazier until they mentally fracture and that makes them psychic, and that is called spiritual awakening. It's totally NOT cult reconditioning, I bet.
