By Ben Lemmon
Vice President & Chief Clinical Officer
“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
— Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 58
Like many lines in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, this one didn’t hit me right away. I read it—probably a hundred times—without much thought. But over time, as I walked further along in my own recovery and sat with more clients in theirs, the meaning of that sentence became clearer. It’s not just a suggestion; it’s a fundamental truth: the old ideas we cling to often stand directly in the way of healing.
In my decade-plus working in behavioral health, I’ve come to rely on a few core therapeutic frameworks. Among them, two of the most impactful for both myself and my clients are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). Both are widely used in treating substance use disorders, and both center around what’s often called the ABC Model:
- A – Activating Event
- B – Belief About the Event
- C – Consequence (emotional or behavioral)
It’s a simple model, but once internalized, it can change everything.
How the ABCs Play Out in Real Life
Imagine I’m sitting in my office and my boss pops in and says, “Hey, can you stop by my office at 3 p.m.?” That’s the activating event (A). Now, my belief (B) about that event will shape my emotional consequence (C).
If I believe, “I’m in trouble—I must’ve messed something up,” I’ll likely feel anxious and fearful.
If instead I believe, “Maybe I’m getting a promotion,” I’ll feel excited and optimistic.
The event didn’t change—my belief did. The human mind struggles to live in uncertainty, often defaulting to worst-case or best-case scenarios. But in both cases, it’s not the situation itself causing the emotional response—it’s the meaning we assign to it.
Another example comes from therapist and author Morty Lefkoe. Imagine it’s raining as you fall asleep. If you’ve got no plans the next day, you may find the rain comforting. But if you’re planning an outdoor wedding, you might wake up distressed. Now flip it again: in some cultures, rain on your wedding day is seen as a sign of good fortune. Same event—different belief—radically different emotional experience.
The point is this: Events have no inherent meaning until we assign one. And it’s the meaning we give them that shapes our joy—or our suffering.
The Beliefs We Mistake for Facts
One of the most important truths I’ve discovered in recovery is this: We operate off our beliefs as if they are facts. Most of us never even stop to question them. Our minds don’t come with a built-in filter that says, “This is just a belief, not reality.” In fact, many of our beliefs are so deeply ingrained that we can’t even see them without someone else pointing them out.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve thought, “I’m just telling it like it is,” when in reality, I was just reinforcing a distorted belief I didn’t know I had. This is where the power of therapy, community, and honest feedback comes in. Left to my own thinking, I rarely uncover these beliefs on my own.
That’s why one of the greatest joys in recovery has become discovering that I’m wrong. I love realizing I’ve outgrown an old belief. And I’m genuinely excited to see what I’m wrong about today that I’ll get to discover five years from now. It’s like peeling back layers of self-deception and getting closer to who I actually am.
Resentment and the Belief That It’s Inevitable
Take the line from the Big Book that says, “Resentment is our number one offender.” I thought I understood it. I thought it meant, “We all have resentments, and we just have to manage them the best we can—write about them, talk about them, make amends, and then try again if they linger.”
But for the first six years of my recovery, I was still operating off the belief that some resentment was just part of being human. That it would always be there in some form. Today, I no longer believe that.
Now I know: I am not designed to carry anger. And in fact, there is nothing more important than ridding myself of it. When I approach my anger with that kind of urgency and resolve, I’ve found that I do have the ability to let it go—fully. Not manage it, not suppress it—release it.
Recovery as Empowerment, Not Punishment
Early in my recovery, I viewed tools like CBT and REBT as ways to beat myself up—constant reminders of where I was at fault. Over time, I realized that these tools weren’t meant to shame me; they were meant to empower me. If the problem is within me, then I’m not powerless—I have a path forward. But if the problem is always outside of me, I’m stuck waiting on a world I can’t control to change.
So, what are “old ideas” or “beliefs”? I often define beliefs for clients as “ideas I hold to be true and operate off of as if they are facts.” The problem? We rarely challenge these beliefs, even when they no longer serve us. Many of us enter recovery operating off of ideas like:
- I need a substance to feel okay.
- If someone hurts me, I have to hold onto it to protect myself.
- My worth rises and falls based on how I perform.
These beliefs drive behavior, and often lead people to self-sabotage. I’ve seen clients start out determined to stay sober, but when the belief creeps back in—“I can’t do this without using”—the wheels start turning. They begin planning how they’ll use “differently.” Sometimes they return to treatment. Other times, they end up in hospitals, jails, or worse.
When we believe that our value depends on our success, then every failure feels like a verdict. Every breakup, every unmet goal, every rejection—becomes a hit to our self-worth. And if we think our value decreases with those experiences, we’ll avoid them at all costs.
A New Way of Thinking
One of the most transformative shifts in my own recovery was re-examining my fear. When I got sober, my biggest fears were failure, hard work, and rejection. I believed these things meant I wasn’t good enough. But over time, I replaced those old beliefs with something truer:
- I don’t need a substance to be okay. In fact, my success depends on staying sober.
- I’m not designed to carry resentment—I can release pain and still learn from it.
- My worth is unconditional. It doesn’t increase with praise or shrink with rejection.
A belief I share with clients often is this: You are no more or less worthy now than the day you were born. A newborn has infinite worth. That doesn’t change when they learn to talk or grow up to become someone who struggles. Our worth is never up for debate. Not yours. Not mine. Not anyone’s.
The Illusion of Knowing What We Need
For much of my life, I was operating under the belief that I knew what I needed to be happy. I had a mental checklist: the job, the house, the relationship, the recognition. And for a while, I pursued those things with everything I had. In early recovery, I began checking off those boxes—new home, new job title, new achievements—and yet, I felt emptier than ever. It was disorienting.
There’s another line in the Big Book that says, “A life run on self-will can hardly be a success.” I used to interpret that as a call to surrender my goals altogether. But now I understand it differently: a life run on self-will isn’t a failure because I’m incapable of achieving things—but because those achievements don’t bring the fulfillment I thought they would.
Meaning and purpose, I’ve come to learn, don’t arise from getting everything I want. They come from removing the thoughts and feelings that disconnect me from the people around me. And—this may not be for everyone—but I’ve also come to believe that those same thoughts disconnected me from God. When I let them go, what’s left is love. And I get to be an expression of God’s love—not to impress or earn anything, but simply because I can.
That expression might look different for each of us, but I believe with all my being that it is the essence of life. The truest kind of joy.
From Burden to Blessing
I used to think of recovery as a burden. Something I had to do. Today, I see it as a privilege. A joy. A pathway to connection and purpose. And I tell clients this often: If recovery feels like a chore, stop—because you’re probably doing it wrong.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment things shifted for me. But I know it happened after I let go of the belief that failure, rejection, or hard work could ever diminish my value. I started leaning into those things. Actively seeking them out. And something remarkable happened:
My world got bigger.
When we stop running from the fears we’ve avoided—because we believed they would prove we weren’t enough—we begin to experience just how expansive life really is. The fears that once boxed us in become doorways. And on the other side of those doorways, we often find freedom, growth, and connection we never imagined possible.
Now, I no longer need the world to look a certain way to feel okay. My peace isn’t dependent on outcomes. And that, more than anything, is what I want for the people I work with: not just abstinence—but real, sustained freedom.
