Q&A – What does it mean to 'surrender' and why is it so powerful?

Narrator: This is Pathway to Recovery, an SA Lifeline Foundation podcast featuring hosts Tara McCausland, who is the SA Lifeline Executive Director, and Justin B., a sex addict living in long-term recovery. We have conversations with experts and individuals who understand the pathway to healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma because we believe that recovering individuals leads to the healing of families. Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast.

Tara McCausland: I'm your host, Tara McCausland, and I'm so excited to have here with me my friend Jenny Brockbank. Thanks for being here with me, Jenny.

Jenny Brockbank: Oh, thank you for inviting me. Always a pleasure.

Tara McCausland: And if you're a frequent listener of this podcast, you might recognize her voice. She actually did the opening and closing of this podcast. Jenny is remarkable in so many ways, and she is also my amazing assistant. So we have for you a short Q&A. We're getting into the holidays, which can be a uniquely challenging time, right, Jenny? Totally. Definitely. Yes. And as we're kind of coming off talking about SAL 12-step, we wanted to share something with you that's really powerful.

It's called surrender. And if you're familiar with 12-step, you may have heard of the concept of surrendering to your higher power or to the God of your understanding. But we wanted to answer the question, what is surrender? How do we do it? And why is it so powerful? And honestly, I feel like Jenny is perhaps one of the best people that can share from, from a great deal of experience on this subject. To first again pose that question, Jenny.

Yeah. How would you describe surrender to someone who has never heard of this concept?

Jenny Brockbank: Well, first of all, those things you said were very generous. So thank you. And I can say back that Tara is amazing. So what a privilege it is to know you. So surrender for me, I think it boils down to the Serenity Prayer and some things that we learn in there. And it's basically, what can I do? What can't I do? And the wisdom to know the difference. And the, the part is, you know, what can't I do?

That is what we have to surrender. And it is tricky. I remember learning from your mother, there's, you know, the surrender process is really not complete until you ask, is there a boundary in that? Which was such a fascinating concept to me. So sometimes, you know, we do have to look at it and say, Well, I'm not necessarily going to surrender everything, you know, that, I mean, I'm going to surrender definitely things I can't change. But when I'm looking at it too, it is empowering to say, well, there's still some things that I absolutely can do that are within my purview that, that I need to take care of.

But the part that we surrender is the part where we don't have control, where God is It's like that's in his realm of things. And when we, we, for me, when I kind of step into that, I get into control and it's never good to control God's plan. For some reason that always backfires.

Tara McCausland: So. What? Awesome. Well, and I, I think it would actually be really helpful. Again, if you're familiar with SAL 12-step or 12-step in general, we will often read the Serenity Prayer at some point in our meetings. So if you don't mind, Jenny, would you read the Serenity Prayer? And that might help fill this out a little bit even more to help our listeners understand what is surrender. Listeners, listen to this and see how this sits as you consider this, this idea of surrendering things we cannot control.

Go ahead.

Jenny Brockbank: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace, taking as he did This sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next.

Thy will, not mine, be done.

Tara McCausland: Thank you. Well, and you know, it's interesting, maybe I'd heard it before I came into this world of addiction and trauma, But this prayer has become so powerful to me. And while it is a rote prayer, and I am a prayer, I, I'm one that prays every day, but saying this prayer, while rote, it helps center me and reminds me, just like you said, when I try and control things outside of my control, and there's a whole lot in that.

Yeah. Uncontrollable arena, it doesn't go well. But if I can, if I can accept the things I cannot change and then move forward with the courage to change the things I can, and then giving again the rest to God, it can make all of the difference. So that is what surrender is. But we often talk about an easy 3-step process to actually like put this into practice. Do you want to explain what that is? Yeah, absolutely.

Jenny Brockbank: So it's knees, phone, box. And I once spoke with your mom about this. I love that she says it's basically science because you're using all these different senses when you do this. And so knees is we kneel and we, we pray. And sometimes we're maybe not in a space to kneel, but that helps us remember prayer, you know, but knees. And if we can say it out loud, That's helpful. It uses, like I'm saying, all these different senses, our hearing, and we're speaking it, and there's just something powerful about that.

And phone, phone is we're going to reach out and we're going to reach out to someone in recovery who understands, and we will voice it to them. And so some people literally, they call on the phone, and I know that's like Who calls on the phone these days?

Narrator: Well, people in recovery do.

Jenny Brockbank: We do. But for me, I prefer to use Marco Polo, and I think that's every bit as powerful. One, I'm looking at myself in the camera as I'm saying it, and I'm speaking it out loud. I'm hearing myself do that. And the person on the other end is also— they can see my body language. They can see— Yeah. I don't know. There's, there's other things that you can tell sometimes when you're looking at someone. So I don't think there's a hard, fast way to do that, but, but basically phone, you're going to speak it out loud to someone in recovery who understands the process.

And then box is we, we have surrender boxes, or it can even be a trash can. That can be a box to where we're going to write something down. And surrender it into the box. I have a friend, I loved it. She created her box where the God of her understanding was Jesus Christ. So she put a picture of Jesus in there and she would put her surrender. She would write them down and put them under that picture of Jesus because he was the one to her that would take that for her.

And I thought that was so beautiful. But it can be personal. You know, I know some people use a jar and, and like I said, some people tear it up and put it in the trash can. Some people burn it. In fact, at, was it the last women's workshop that we did? And we had a big bonfire and we, we burned our surrenders. And that was so, I remember that it was powerful. And, and I had people from my group texting me who couldn't be there and was writing down their surrenders and Filming it, you know, going in.

And there's just something amazing about seeing that, you know, go up in flames to where it's gone. I would say for me, the surrender process is really powerful. All 3 of those things, sometimes the more that I'm practicing doing that, the quicker I am to really surrender things. But sometimes it's a process. In fact, recently, so I've been going through some very difficult challenges and I found myself excusing myself, begging God. And for me, if I'm begging God, I am not in a place of surrender because I'm like asking him to control something.

And there's a difference between asking and like, I am so desperate. Can you change this for me? You know, and I recognized it. And the interesting thing was, I don't know, I just felt justified because it was such a severe, extreme situation. And, but the more I looked at it, I was like, but you know what? I'm not feeling peaceful. I have a lot of anxiety. I'm very stressed. And I'm just hoping all the time that God changes this circumstance that I have no power over.

And He, it wasn't his will apparently, because he did not, he did not do what I was asking him to do. Dang it. But I recognized, okay, I'm really not surrendering this. And, you know, recognizing I was justifying not surrendering it and that I really, really wanted to live in some peace and that I didn't want to have that anxiety all the time eating at me, hoping, you know, for something that was apparently not God's will.

And so I had been praying for help with that. And it was fascinating because we have to come to recovery with a willing heart. But, you know, we learned through this, through working the steps that we don't always have power. Like that's not within our control necessarily. We bring our willing heart, but the actual change of heart, that's a God thing. Hmm. And so I really didn't have the power to change my heart. God had to do that.

And I do remember it was for me pretty dramatic to where I woke up one morning Thinking, I don't wanna control this anymore. I wanna give this to God. This is his. I do surrender it. And it was different. It was, it was empowering and it was peaceful. And I could not be, have those feelings of anxiety all of the time that were plaguing me, that were really weighing me down. Hmm.

Tara McCausland: Thank you so much for sharing that. You explained it so well, this 3-step process, the on your knees, On the phone, in the box. It's easy to remember if you put in those 3 steps, and it is powerful. We know the power of connection, both with a person that we trust in recovery and the power of connection with the God of our understanding. And there is science backing also the, the power of writing something out. Mm-hmm. And setting it aside to get it out of your system, right?

So to stop that, like that runaway train. In our mind, which we all relate to. But how do you know you need to surrender something, Jenny?

Jenny Brockbank: For me, like I said, there's some signs. Maybe I'm begging. If I'm looking at how I'm feeling inside and really evaluating that, do I have peace? Am I trying to control something? Control is a big sign that I need to surrender. You know, just looking at Internally, where I'm at, I think, is the biggest indicator of that need.

Tara McCausland: So feelings of anxiety or control or fear, those things that put you in a tailspin, right? I know exactly what puts me in a tailspin, and I can feel it in my body. Right. So getting back to a space of— we use the term serenity, but back to a place of peace. And I've encouraged Some women to do this 10, 15, as many times a day as you need to do this in order to get back to a place of serenity or peace.

But there is real power in this practice. I'm not always as quick to surrender as I ought to be. But I know that when I'm consistent with it, there is a clear difference in how I feel and how I interact. with those around me. It's a powerful recovery tool.

Jenny Brockbank: Ditto. And you know what? Can I just share that when, for me, when I am practicing that well, how I'm going to show up is with greater curiosity with things, less like, this is how it is. I'm going to show up with a lot more humility. I'm going to show up with greater kindness to myself and to others. And Just with a lot more peace, a lot more serenity around things. My kids might be a little more wild than I would like someday.

And you know what? Some days that'll really bug me, but some days if I'm in a good place of surrender, like, I'm okay. I'm okay. Even though it's more wild and more out of control than I would like, I can handle things when I'm in a good place of surrender.

Tara McCausland: Awesome. Well, and as we're wrapping up, I wanted to just put a little plug in for the blog post that Jenny wrote on this topic, which is at salifeline.org. If you just go to the top dashboard and go to blog, you can read more. And it's specifically regarding surrender around the holidays, which I think is again very timely. We all have things well outside of our control when it comes to family dynamics, expectations, etc. have around the holidays.

So I'd encourage you to go check it out. And also, if you're interested, you can sign up for our newsletter and you'll get updates about those types of things like a new blog post. So thank you so much, Jenny, for coming on, sharing your wisdom about surrender. And to our listeners, just a little heads up, this will be our final post for 2023. I'm making some boundaries for myself for the upcoming busyness of the holidays. So we'll be back in January of 2024.

Thank you so much to our listeners for being here. We'll look forward to seeing you in January.

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