A Path for Healing What Divides Us

We are living in a time of relational breakdown. Our systems fracture us. Our stories divide us. Our nervous systems are saturated....Polarization. Fragmentation. Exhaustion. We don’t just suffer these conditions. We are SHAPED by them. If we want something different, we must rebuild the space between us—with presence, humility, and a willingness to be changed together. As an addiction therapist, I am inspired to borrow the insights of the 12 steps to build a grassroots path to healing that anyone can start on their own in their community. But first— We need to be honest about the primary addictions of our current society:

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** Addiction to certainty — Needing a fixed story, a hero, a villain, a “side,” so we don’t have to sit in the unbearable ambiguity of a world in flux.

** Addiction to control — Clinging to outcomes, identities, narratives, systems—even when they are killing us—because surrender feels like death.

** Addiction to distraction — Screens, scrolling, numbing information overload, constant stimulation—because to slow down would mean feeling the grief, the loneliness, the unmet needs.

** Addiction to outrage — The false fuel of righteous anger, which gives temporary coherence to isolated selves but fractures the field further.

** Addiction to individualism — The myth that we must figure it all out alone, that needing each other is weakness, that success leads to separation.

 

In other words:

We are addicted to everything that protects us from the raw, relational, vulnerable truth that we are not separate. And the more we cling to these addictions, the more fragmented we become—inside ourselves, between each other, and with the living world.

These patterns numb our grief, protect our fear, and fracture the living field between us. But beneath the noise, another truth endures: The work of recovery is not just personal—it’s relational.

It begins when we stop trying to manage connection and start learning how to belong again, together.

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In the spirit of AA, we name a higher power:

* Emergent — it arises between, not within.

* Greater than the sum of individuals — no one owns it or controls it.

* Responsive — it changes based on how we show up.

* Generative — it can produce coherence, healing, insight, and new life.

* Fragile and strong — it can be harmed through betrayal, domination, or collapse, but it can also heal if tended.

* Alive — it has its own rhythms, pulses, invitations.

* Trustworthy, but not predictable — we can trust its movement toward life and coherence, but not predict how it will shape us.

The higher power here is the living intelligence of the relational field. It is the deeper coherence that emerges between us when we show up undefended. It is the presence that we cannot manufacture or control — but that arises, shapes us, and transforms us when we risk real presence together.

The field itself is alive. It holds the memory of belonging we forgot, and the future coherence we cannot yet imagine.

To trust the field is to trust that life itself is wiser between us than within us alone.

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Here are the Twelve Steps for Relational Healing and Emergent Wholeness inspired by AA/NA :

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1. Acknowledge the Strain

We admit that we have been living in ways that fragment and isolate us. We are not powerless in the deepest sense—but we are saturated. Saturated by systems, screens, and stories that fracture our attention, polarize our communities, and exhaust our nervous systems.

We have been trying to connect inside cultures that reward certainty, control, and self-protection.

It’s not our fault alone. But it is ours to meet.

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2. Trust the Relational Field

We come to believe that real strength and healing grow when we meet each other with openness and curiosity.

The relational space—when met with honesty, humility, and presence—has a deeper intelligence than any single mind.

We do not have to fix each other. We show up, together, and trust that the field, when honored, reveals what we could not find alone.

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3. Release Certainty

We choose to release our grasp on certainty, control, and self-image. Instead, we root ourselves in presence: raw, incomplete, unfinished. We trust that coherence, belonging, and new life can emerge through us—not because we control it, but because we allow it.

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4. Examine Our Part

We look honestly at how our attitudes and actions have contributed to distrust and division.

We turn toward the habits—spoken and unspoken—that fragment trust: withholding, posturing, blaming, performing, withdrawing.

We honor that these strategies once protected us.

But now, they often prevent the deeper coherence we long for.

By acknowledging our part, we begin to clear the space between us.

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5. Share Our Truths

We speak the parts we’ve kept hidden—the fears, the judgments, the places where connection once felt too dangerous to risk.

We share not to be absolved, but to weave trust: strand by strand, truth by truth.

In being heard without fixing, and in hearing without judgment, human connection regains its aliveness.

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6. Release the Enemy Story

We let go of seeing others as threats or adversaries.

We see that the walls between us often come from feeling disconnected, not from hatred.

Releasing blame, we discover new paths to empathy and common purpose.

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7. Commit to Relational Practices

We ask for the humility and courage to approach each encounter with curiosity and kindness.

By practicing deep listening and honest engagement, we strengthen the bonds of trust and grow the conditions where coherence and transformation can take root.

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8. Prepare to Repair Harm

We bring our attention to the places where trust has frayed—where harm, misunderstanding, or withdrawal have thinned the field.

We name these ruptures not to blame, but to clear a path toward renewal.

Repair is not a performance. It is the slow, sacred work of return.

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9. Act to Rebuild Trust

We move from intention to action:

Listening where we once dismissed.

Reaching where we once retreated.

Showing up where we once stayed silent.

Through small, steady acts, we reweave the threads that sustain the field between us.

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10. Maintain Ongoing Awareness

We recognize that habits of certainty, blame, withdrawal, and control will keep trying to reassert themselves.

When they arise, we meet them not with shame, but with honest, gentle recalibration.

Tending the relational field is not a one-time act—it is a living, breathing practice we return to again and again.

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11. Seek Shared Insight

We create spaces—dialogue circles, creative gatherings, quiet reflection—where the field itself can speak.

We learn to hear what no single mind or voice could know alone.

In this wider listening, new coherence becomes possible.

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12. Carry the Message of Connection

Having glimpsed how openness and co-creation transform us, we carry these values into all aspects of life.

Not by demanding others change, but by living as examples—showing that a different way of belonging is not only possible, but already alive—and longing for us to remember it.