What Happens When We Are Shown the Limits of Our Own Thinking!?

I’ve noticed something fascinating in the conversations underneath my posts

When I question an assumption in addiction treatment, very rarely does the conversation simply stay with the assumption

Something else happens

Question whether lived experience gives us authority over another person:
“So lived experience has no value?”

Question whether trauma should be assumed:
So trauma doesn’t matter?

Question the disease model:
So you’re saying addiction isn’t real?

Question lifelong recovery:
“So you’re telling people to stop doing what keeps them well?”

Question whether our assessments actually discover the person:
“But we already ask those questions”

Question whether a model is organising what we see:
“All models have limitations”

And one of my favourites:
“That’s what we already do”

Sometimes the challenge gets exaggerated into something I never said

Sometimes it gets absorbed into the existing model

Sometimes the original claim quietly changes

Sometimes personal experience becomes evidence

Sometimes gratitude becomes evidence

Sometimes credentials become evidence

Sometimes the conversation moves from the question being asked to the person asking it

And sometimes we agree with the challenge so completely that we don’t notice ourselves reproducing the very assumption being challenged in the next sentence

“This is spot on. And here’s why what I already believed is still the answer”

That’s perhaps the most interesting response of all!

Because resistance to an idea doesn’t always look like disagreement

Sometimes it looks like agreement that changes absolutely nothing

I know this process because I’ve done it myself

For years I could have told you I was open-minded while interpreting almost everything I encountered through what I already believed about addiction and recovery

– I could ask questions
– I could listen
– I could care deeply

And still never notice that my understanding was deciding what their answers meant

THAT IS THE BLIND SPOT!!

The mind is extraordinarily good at protecting an explanation without experiencing itself as protecting anything

And perhaps that’s why genuine inquiry is so difficult

It isn’t simply being willing to ask questions

It is being willing to remain there when the answer threatens something we have invested years in believing

– Our training
– Our recovery
– Our professional identity
– Our model
– Our expertise

Even the story we’ve used to understand our own life

So I’m becoming interested in a different question:
What happens inside us when the person, or the evidence, doesn’t fit what we already believe?

Do we become more curious?
Or do we find a cleverer way of making them fit?

Because perhaps the greatest limitation in addiction treatment isn’t that we don’t know enough

It’s how difficult it is to see the moment that what we know has stopped us discovering anything new