“You don’t need to do everything.
Do what calls to your heart; effective action comes from love.
It is unstoppable. It is enough.”
—Joanna Macy
There was a time when I didn’t even know there was a problem. Everyone else seemed just as busy, overwhelmed, and stressed, as I was becoming. I thought that was just how life and the nonprofit world were. I was addicted without even knowing I had taken my first sip.
My professional experiences—and confessions—aren’t about any one particular organization. Rather, I offer windows into my experiences in the nonprofit jungle, over a period of almost thirty years. The terrain stretches across nine different local, regional, and global organizations, including domestic violence centers, homeless shelters, churches, prison ministries, community action agencies, schools, workforce investment boards, environmental, and sustainability organizations.
I refer to them anonymously because I want to keep it real. I am not a drama queen. I don’t gossip. And yet sometimes the truth kicks up dust. Confessions are like that.
But it is well worth the dust it may kick up to share the story of my soul safari on sabbatical into unknown territory, away from being co-CEO and chief operations officer of an international environmental nonprofit. My initial six-week sabbatical became a six-month sabbatical, which became a two-year sabbatical, which became an “I never went back sabbatical.”
Unbeknownst to me, while working in the nonprofit world, I was slowly building my psychic soul muscle, growing the power that would enable me to shift my identity and alter my entire life.
Before I could make joy my life’s GPS, I had to move through several stages of change. I had to go from not even knowing there was a problem to admitting I had seven simultaneously occurring and related addictions. Moving through these stages of change occurred beneath the surface of my life. Like a caterpillar in a cocoon, I needed to dissolve and transform before I could take action and fly.[1]
An important stage in my evolution was identifying my activist addictions:
- Sacrifice: surrendering my soul and happiness by putting myself last in life.
- Suffering: choosing pain and distress as a chronic response to life’s challenges.
- Control: imposing my will and opinions over people and circumstances.
- Busyness: deriving my worth through excessive productivity and achievement.
- Struggle and Force: pushing people and situations where they don’t want to go.
- Drama: orienting my life, thoughts, and reactions, around the negative.
- Effort and Hard Work: resisting the organic flow and the power of emergence.
I know that some believe there is no such thing as moderation with an addiction. Some believe that if you have an addiction there is something wrong with you. I don’t agree.
The seven activist addictions are deeply internalized ways of being that we are taught from a young age. They are not reserved for activism alone. They are endemic to our entire modern culture. I call them addictions because they are compulsive behaviors that we reach for without thinking, regardless of the consequences.
I know I am not alone in these addictions and in fact, the person who doesn’t have at least several of them is a rare bird indeed. They show up however they show up. Healing from them requires compassion, not judgment.
It is also important to distinguish between the addictions, which are only symptoms, and the root issues that can lie beneath them. Sometimes addictions are a response to trauma. They can also be a response to cultural conditioning. We need not be ashamed of them. They are not who we are; they are how we respond under chronic stress.
Some addicts hit rock bottom. One day life becomes intolerable, and they know that something must change. For me, small choices and small steps, compounded over time, allowed me to live my way out of the lie that life is hard and that making the world a better place requires suffering and sacrifice. After I had suffered enough, learned enough, and was ready (enough), I began to act.
[1] James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross, and Carlo C. DiClemente, Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward (New York: Harper Collins, 2010).