90. 'The Way of Integrity' Part 1: The First Step of Recovery and Getting Out of the Darkness

Welcome to Unhooked, The Breaking Point Addiction Podcast. In this episode, host Jeremy Lipkowitz dives deep into the first chapter of 'The Way of Integrity' by Martha Beck. Explore the concept of integrity, the journey of recovery, and how to recognize the signs of being out of alignment in your life. Whether you're struggling with addiction or simply feeling stuck, this episode offers insightful reflections and practical advice to set you on a path toward wholeness and personal growth. Don't miss out on this transformative discussion!

00:00 Introduction to the Episode

00:39 Exploring 'The Way of Integrity' by Martha Beck

02:09 Understanding Integrity and Wholeness

03:00 Dante's Journey and Its Relevance

07:46 The Six Symptoms of Being Out of Integrity

15:24 Admitting the Truth and Seeking Help

18:14 Conclusion and Final Thoughts


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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWITZ

Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.

For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.

Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.

Transcript

 You're listening to unhooked the breaking point addiction podcast.  On today's episode, I'm going to be diving into the book the way of integrity by Martha Beck. And exploring the topic of the very first step in recovery, which is getting out of the darkness. So, if you're looking for a roadmap out of your misery, This is the episode for you. So stay tuned. 

 



So welcome everyone back to another episode of the unhooked podcast. 

I'm your host, Jeremy Lipkowitz. Here for all things, recovery related, all things related to personal growth and development. And this episode is no different. Today, I'm going to be exploring the first chapter of a book that I started reading. And this is a book that was the recommendation of a dear friend of mine. 

He is also a two time guest on the unhooked podcast. In fact, the only person to appear twice, I believe. Uh, his name is your to Calper. Some great episodes in the archives for you there. But one of the books he talks about in both of those interviews is the way of integrity by Martha Beck. And I finally got around to buying this book. And today I started reading it and it just blew me away. Um, not all the way through it. 

I'm a few chapters in, but the first few chapters really made an impact on me.  And so I wanted to explore. The first chapter and how it relates to some of the things that you will go through inevitably in your life. And with almost every episode on this show, this doesn't just apply to the addicts out there. But any of you who feel stuck or confused or blocked or lost or in some way, not fully living the life that you know, you were meant to live. So this episode is really going to touch on.  Something that any one can relate to no matter where you are in life, whether you're struggling with addiction or bad habits, or just feeling a little bit stuck and wanting some clarity.  Now in general, this book is obviously about integrity. And in the modern age, we tend to associate that word integrity mostly with things like living ethically or morally. But the way that Martha Beck describes it is simply. Living whole. So living fully, you know, living in that sense of completeness.  Because this is really what it means to be integral or to have integrity is to be whole or to be complete. In the same way we might say a bridge has structural integrity. 

It has that completeness, that wholeness to it.  The same reason. We describe things as integers. You know, they are whole numbers. So this topic of integrity and getting into integrity is really about the topic of becoming whole.  And this book it's follows the story of Dante in the divine comedy. And when I was reading this in the intro, I had to really search my memory for the divine comedy. 

I think I might have read this book in high school, uh, but it has been so long that I honestly can't remember much of anything. But very loosely. For those of you who haven't read the story. Uh, it's I think a book from the 12 hundreds or 14 hundreds from a long time ago. And very loosely, it follows the story of a man Dante. Who wakes up in the dark woods. And he's lost in a dark and scary place. 

And they're beasts that are attacking him. And it's the process of him going through this journey. So he goes through the Inferno. This is where we get the term Dante's Inferno. Which is hell. Then he goes through purgatory, this climb out of hell. And into the heavens. So it is a fantastical story. That provides a good metaphor for each of our own hero's journey.  Anyway, the point of this story. 

And one of the very interesting things that Martha Beck describes in the beginning. Is that this story begins in the middle. And. For those of us in recovery in some ways that's where our story begins as well. It begins in the middle of our life. You know, we wake up to our life at some point, and this is what Martha Beck talks about in this book is that at some point we wake up to our life and realize that we are not where we want to be.  So I want to read some quotes and some passages from this book and just reflect on them. Uh, because they really did inspire me. So once again, this comes from the way of integrity by Martha Beck, the subtitle is finding the path to your true self. So this was not written by me. 

If there's any copyright stuff, please know that this is from Martha Beck.   

Like many compelling adventure stories. The divine comedy begins in the middle.  Midway through the journey of our life says, Dante, I found myself in a dark forest for the right way was lost.  He doesn't mention how he got to the woods, what he was doing when he wandered off track or how far he's gone. All this information is literally foggy. The only thing Dante really knows is that he's alone, adrift and confused.  The experience of noticing we're on the wrong path, in what feels like the wrong life comes to almost all of us at some point.  A few years into a job or relationship or living situation. 

We may suddenly realize that everything seems off. Like Dante, we're a bit dim about exactly what's wrong or how we got here. But in an empty moment, when we finally gotten the kids off to school. Or we look up from desks at the office and notice everyone else has gone home. Well, we've just had another gas. 

They fight with the person we thought we'd love forever. 

We stare into space and think. What am I doing? What is this place? How did I get here? It wasn't supposed to be this way.  



So this comes from the first chapter of the book. And I love that this is the beginning because you know, in the story or in the journey of recovery, this is where it will begin. At some point, you wake up to your addiction. 

At some point, you wake up to your life and realize. That you are in a hole that you're on rock bottom, that you are not living the life you want to live. And for me, this happened and it, you know, it continues to happen throughout life. You know, there are going to be many moments where you wake up to being out of integrity, to being out of alignment, to being.  Not where you want to be. But in my story of porn recovery, you know, there were many instances where I woke up and had this moment of clarity, where I kind of opened my eyes and looked around and said, what am I doing here? 

Like, is this really the life I'm living?  And so I love that this is the beginning of the journey. And so for those of you who have had that moment, Where you look around and it feels like you kind of come out of a stupor, you come out of a fog and you realize.  Where am I? Is this really the life I'm living? That might feel painful at first, but to just know that it's the first step to getting back to integrity, to getting back to wholeness. To practicing your recovery. So it's a beautiful practice of finding yourself again, when you can look around and realize you're not where you want to be.  So later in this chapter,  Martha Beck goes on to describe what she calls the six dark wood of error symptoms. 

So this, this, uh, dark wood area that we wake up into, she calls the dark wood of error. You know, when we've lost our way, when we've gone down the wrong path. And she describes these six symptoms that you can look for six ways to get a sense of whether or not you are out of integrity, whether you are in the dark woods of this story. And so I want to just go through these briefly so that you can check in with your own life and see if you connect with any of these.  

So the first symptom of the dark wood of error is feeling purposeless.  And this is something that, again, I hear from so many of the people I work with and people that right into this. Uh, show to, you know, send comments. And is that feeling of emptiness or purposelessness in their life? And when we are chasing the high of addiction, chasing the pleasure is chasing success. Chasing, what other people tell us success looks like. We often feel that sense of emptiness inside and it's compounded and it gets worse when we actually reached the summit of some of those peaks. 

When we get to the top, when we have all the success, when we have a lot of pleasure and we realized there's nothing in it, So this is a quote from the book.  Martha Beck is talking about a client she's working with.  

And she says, I wish you could meet the people. I know who've reached the pinnacle of our societies, idealized achievements only to realize that as one woman told me there's no, there, there. 

I thought there was a position in the world that would make me feel good. But I got to that position and I didn't find anything that made me happy. It all seemed pointless. So maybe you can resonate with this. Maybe you have had some idea that as if I can just get this thing, get this. Person get this sexual encounter. Masturbate, whatever it is, you can have this idea that if I just do this, then I can be finally happy. And there's no, there, there, it doesn't bring lasting satisfaction. 

It doesn't bring lasting contentment.  That feeling of emptiness and purposelessness is the first symptom that you're out of integrity.

The second symptom of being out of integrity or of being in your addiction. Is emotional misery. And so this is just, you know, if you're noticing that you are feeling. Many. Strong negative emotions, depression, anxiety, stress, fear, abandonment, loneliness. If you're feeling all these things, it's emotional misery. Is a sign that you were out of integrity in some way that your life is not whole, and that you are not acting in integrity.  And so these.  Experiences these emotions. 

Again, our messengers telling us that we're out of integrity. There. They're beautiful things to look at because they remind us, Hey, there's something in your life that needs addressing. So strong emotions. Again, depression, irritability, anxiety. All of the. The emotional misery that might show up. That's the second symptom. Of being out of integrity.  

The third symptom is physical deterioration. And so this is a really interesting one because there we know now there is a strong mind-body connection. There's a strong link between being.  Out of integrity in some way, you know, whether you're lying or cheating or stealing or sad or depressed and physical health. So there's this quote. 

I want to read here again from the book. There's a whole field of medicine. Psycho neuro immunology that focuses on the way psychological stress, including the stress of lying or keeping secrets contributes to illness. Studies I've linked deception and secret keeping to elevated heart rate and blood pressure increased stress hormones, higher, bad cholesterol and glucose levels and reduced immune responses. The more significant are deceptive behavior, the worse, the effect on health.  So, again, this is just one example of looking at the effects of secret keeping and deceptive behavior on our immunology, on our health. 

But the link goes beyond that. It goes into all the ways that when we are out of alignment, it affects our physical health. So this is something again that I noticed as well.  The ways that my.  My secret keeping, you know, keeping my porn habit from my loved ones was affecting me on a physiological level. 

If I really tuned in, I could notice that sense of uneasiness. That tension, the stress and how it was. Making me sick physiologically. So this is another symptom that you can check into.  

Symptom number four of being out of integrity is consistent relationship failures.  So again, this one is obvious. If you are out of integrity with your actions, with your life, if you were living a life that you are not aligned with, with your values, you will experience consistent relationship failures. For myself and my journey of point addiction recovery. 

This was probably the most obvious one is that I was seeing. The ways that my lack of integrity and acting out with porn was affecting my relationships. And in particular, my romantic relationships. But it's not just the romantic ones that it affects your friendships, your family relationships as well. 

All of the ways that it can affect your intimacy with other people.  So this is the fourth symptom to check out.  Whether or not you are in integrity or out of integrity.  Symptom number five is consistent career failures. So this is an extension of the one we just looked at. You know, if you're out of integrity, you'll be experiencing those relationship problems. Because of the ways that you might be hiding or lying or. You know, physically deteriorating having emotional misery and that affects your relationships. 

It also affects your career and your growth in your career. So that's an obvious one there.  

Symptom number six, and this is probably the most relevant. For recovery and addiction recovery. Is if you have bad habits that you can't break. This is a symptom of being out of integrity. In your life. And being out of alignment and, you know, in addiction, So obviously if you have bad habits, you know, this is something, whether it's porn addiction, eating junk food. Uh, being too lazy, not getting enough exercise. 

There's so many ways that this can show up.  So another quote from the book, I'll just read this.  Martha Beck says, if you feel unable to stop an activity. If you're spending the rent money on it, if you hide it from others and feel the creeping obsession slowly consuming you, your first step to integrity. A big one might be acknowledging that you're addicted. From there, you can begin regaining your integrity.  So that first step is to admit that you have this addiction. Admit that you have these habits that you are hiding from others that you are trying to conceal. Things that are out of your control, whether it's binge eating or binge watching on Netflix or porn addiction or any of the other bad habits and addictions that can creep in. This is the sixth and final symptom to check out for, to see if you're out of integrity.  

Now she summarizes this chapter again, this is chapter one, simply by saying that the first step towards integrity, again, the way of integrity and getting into integrity. Is to tell the truth about how lost you are. You know that moment, you wake up to your truth, to your reality, and you see where you are. 

If you can tell the truth about how lost you are, and you can admit to yourself. That you need help. That you're not doing as well as you thought, or that you pretend that is the first step.  And that was true for me. It's true for everyone. Who's out of integrity and everyone who is struggling with addiction, the very first step is to admit that you need help admit that you have a problem.  So there is a.  A practice that she recommends in this. 

And I love it because she starts by saying, you know, a few warnings. She says your pride may sting. By doing this exercise.  But it is a healing process and what this process is, what this exercise is.  Is to simply say out loud, you know, You can whisper it to yourself. You can shout it out loud. You can tell it to a friend. But to repeat some of these phrases and just see how it lands in your body.  And so the phrases that she offers are things like this.  My life. 

Isn't perfect.  I don't like the way things are going.  I don't feel good.  I'm sad.  I'm angry.  I'm scared.  I'm not at peace.  I can't find my people.  I'm not sure where to go.  I don't know what to do.  I need help.  

And this is a beautiful place to start, you know, to say these out loud and to admit to yourself, even if it stings, even if it hurts your ego, even if you've been pretending, like everything's fine on the outside. If you can admit that and tell the truth about how lost you are.  Then you can begin the journey. To regaining your integrity to living that path of meaning and purpose and fulfillment. But you have to be able to admit to yourself. Where you are. And if you do this. You will notice.  A relaxation that comes over you, you know, an easing of tension. 

If you can be honest with yourself rather than. Putting on this mask, pretending you've got it all figured out, pretending everything's fine. Just the way it is.  If you can be honest and say, you know what? I do need help.  I'm not where I want to be. I am afraid.  That is such a beautiful thing to do for yourself. 

And it's. Uh, it is the first step.  So I wanted to just come on here and say, uh, how much that this first chapter impacted me. I am still going through the book and I'm going to continue going through it. And my guess is that I'm going to have a few more episodes diving into some of the future chapters in this book, because it's just a powerful one. So, if you want to read it along for yourself, I think that would be a beautiful thing. Uh, it's a great book. 

It gets many good reviews, so I highly recommend checking it out.  So that is it for today as always, if you want to support this podcast, the best way to do it is to go and leave some reviews  it really helps spread the message.  And with that I'm signing off from Amsterdam. 

We'll catch you on the next episode.