The Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual and Sexual Wholeness - Softcover

Picucci, Michael

9781556432866: The Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual and Sexual Wholeness

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556432860 ISBN 13: 9781556432866

Publisher: North Atlantic Books, 1998

Founder of the Institute for Staged Recovery in New York City and creator of "Authentic Process Therapy," Picucci is an addictions counselor who bases his methods primarily on personal experience. In this updated edition of his self-published Complete Recovery, Picucci describes a "Stage Two" recovery program for evolving beyond freedom from addictions to "holism," which encompasses joy, bliss, love, empowerment, creativity, respect for all life, and peace. Picucci makes an interesting distinction between recovery from addictions and childhood traumas" and "recovery of fulfillment, wisdom, serenity, and emotional, spiritual and sexual wholeness.

Using a structure of 12 stations, which can be visited and revisited in any order as often as needed, he guides readers through six fundamental and six emergent modules of this process for healing the "spiritual-sexual split" and the "cultural pain... of oppressed minorities," and ultimately achieving the "shame-free presentation of self." Picucci says he offers "nothing less than a re-birthing process" through a combination of one-on-one psychotherapy, support groups and spirituality. His own life experiences as a gay man, once married, now HIV positive, surviving AIDS, cancer, a heart attack, triple-bypass surgery and drug and alcohol addictions give him a uniquely credible perspective on healing and wholeness. In his cogent, well-organized handbook, Picucci functions a bit like the gay shamans who had a special place in North American Indian tribes. His compassionate acceptance of diversity will inspire many readers to care to take the next step and seek the help they need.

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From the Publisher:

Written with warmth, honesty, and compassion, The Journey Toward Complete Recovery charts a new path toward spiritual growth and renewal. Picking up where the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book left off, Picucci addresses the personal struggle recovering people so often express: "I'm doing the best I can. Why do I feel so empty and limited? Why do I still feel a lack of purpose and meaning in life?"

The offering in this book is not solely for addicts, ex-addicts, or those who identify themselves as survivors of childhood trauma. It demonstrates a significant healing approach for every person seeking a richer life.

From the Author:

This book presents a bold new vision of psychotherapeutic healing. This type of therapy is called An Authentic Process Toward Complete Recovery or simply "Authentic Process Therapy." It has organically grown out of my personal experience, the experiences of my clients, the countless workshops I've conducted over the years, the wisdom of the maturing recovery movement, and insights from diverse cultural perspectives.

Authentic Process Therapy (APT) is a significant healing approach for all human beings who want to enrich their lives. It is not just for addicts, ex-addicts, and those who identify themselves as adult survivors of a traumatic childhood. While the research comes from the reclaiming of health, happiness, and fulfillment for the most broken of us, the application of these healing strategies is beneficial to every person seeking a richer life. Those who have experienced the depths of despair have used these healing techniques, emerging from their personal process with profoundly illuminating insights for all of us. APT is a multi-staged system for recovering your emotional, psychological, cultural, spiritual and sexual wholeness through community healing. The goal (also, the result, I trust) of your commitment to the process is complete recovery, or holism as described in Chapter One.

What makes Authentic Process Therapy bold, new and distinct from other modes of healing? I feel that there are several important factors:
* It was developed out of the experience of those being healed, rather then from an academic or medical perspective.
* It incorporates from many disciplines and cultures that which has consistently demonstrated the ability to effect transformational change.
* It incorporates the "community healing approach" used in addictions recovery (Twelve-Step, Therapeutic Communities, etc.) but shifts the focus to breaking down the barriers to feeling whole and complete experienced by all people.
* It merges clinical, scientific, and psychotherapeutic discoveries and places them within the spiritual community context.
* The healing process is clearly defined from the onset. This awareness of the "big picture" of one's journey brings comfort and grace to the healing. However, it allows unlimited flexibility providing for individual adaptation.
* The personal "powers" and tools required for the journey are described in simple terms.
* The process is pragmatic because anyone who dedicates themselves to the journey will experience concrete results with each engagement.

The benefits of committing one's self to the process are glimpsed before the process has begun. The living map presented in this book invites you to move towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards personal power. It invites the reader to make good sense out of what has previously been an ambiguous process. For example, this book presents a list of universally "shared desires"- what most people really want from therapy - then provides tools and insights for fulfilling those desires, culminating in complete recovery.

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