The 7 Steps of the SĀBR system

The 7 steps of SABR are really the declarations of a person with more rounded, more positive self-perception:

1. Acceptance: Embrace your design, faults, and strengths.
2. Attention: Control actions by staying present.
3. Assertion: Regularly assert and develop strengths in service to yourself and others.
4. Appreciation: Seek and demonstrate gratitude for people, events, and opportunities.
5. Amnesty: Relinquish control over the past and future, focusing on reasonable efforts today.
6. Altruism: Be kind to yourself, avoiding situations that trigger habits.
7. Ambition: Develop character and habits positively.

*The higher power element is where people of faith or spirituality can connect with their deity or religion. It is not mandatory if you don't have a faith or religion.

The SABR system is rooted in a mix of the best developments over the last 50 years of psychology and evidence from treating addiction and other mental health issues. There are techniques from every major strand of clinical practice, including CBT, CAT, psychodynamic models, addiction psychology, motivational interviewing, 12-step systems, the Anonymous systems, Matrix systems, and so on. This module explains how SĀBR offers a more complete route to recovery than any one system alone.

People rarely start in life wanting to have bad habits or poor character. We all have our flaws, of course, but we also have our strengths. But the mind shows something called negative salience: a tendency to over-remember the negative. Then, these things start to erode our self belief. Instead of saying 'I failed at something' the thought moves to 'I am a failure'. No wonder we end up seeking escape into addictions and other vices: they offer a quick route to feeling better.

It's an awful thing to see someone who has lost self belief. Time is like a veil which hides the changes in plain sight.

Thoughts became actions, actions became habits, and habits became character.

Positive psychology is one of the contributory elements of SABR which we have had unique experience in putting into pracrtice. It has emerged from research over the last 20 years or so, looking at people who seem unusually well despite their difficult life experiences. Put simply, mental illness is about studying negative outliers. Positive psychology comes from the study of positive outliers. Science has found that those at the high end often have a lot in cxommon with those at the bottom end; in fact, the extremes have more in common with each other than they do with the large 'middle'.

SABR's psychological approach has 2 main strands:

• Gratitude: Developing a more solution-focused, rather than problem-focused mindset
• Self awareness: Focusing wilfully on discovering and developing your strengths

People who have come to SABR have done so having tried many other centres, many other therapies and locations. SABR is not more of the same. It feels different enough for them to really believe it may hold greater hope for them. It starts showing results as quickly as other conventional methods used in recovery, but it also offers the prospect of something else: a more rounded, fuller appreciation of oneself. It's one things to be free from a negative perception, but that leaves a gap which needs to be filled with genuine, believable knowledge and direction with which to build a more resilient, fulfilled life.

SABR is not obsessed with goals and targets. It is more about being a decent human, and building a full life alongside unwanted habits. Developing a strength is easier, quicker and more satisfying to do than eliminating a weakness. Being sure of our strengths also emboldens us to have greater momentum and courage when tackling negative things. It is a far more palatable and sustainable concept than solely tackling the stubborn, incredibly strong forces of nature that govern addiction:

In essence, this is central to the SĀBR philosophy:

Your identity need not be dominated by being just 'an addict' or a 'patient'. You have many positive qualities which are self-evident, or which need to be discovered and developed, if you want to claim a more fulfilled life and a more robust recovery.

This is quite different to the philosophy of 12-step processes, which seem to govern one's life purely on whether or not they are maintaining abstinence and keep track of their vices.

You are the only one who can make your particular mark in life. With SĀBR, you have a richness of tools and methods to add positive direction to it.

All of you is important

The SĀBR way demands a full appraisal of a person, from their very biology to the way they think, their history, and their environment. This makes sense because human beings are not laboratory animals- we live in complex social structures, each with our own gifts and challenges, and looking at these complexities with a more positive eye gives us the chance to remember our forgotten good qualities, and to counter against the strong brain chemistry that maintains addiction. Scientifically, all destructive habits are the result of some part of the mind having been caught in a trap. The mind repeatedly seeks some kind of reward and satisfaction which seems to become more demanding the more one feeds it. It grows too dominant, subverting the rest of the mind toward only being preoccupied with the action.

The duality of all things

Nothing is completely good or bad. Sometimes the very thing that seems bad can be good in a different situation.

Death, disasters, victories and riches: they can be positive or negative, depending on who they affect or what the situation means, or indeed what changes in their aftermath. The same goes for qualities and virtues: selfishness, generosity, logicality, even kindness- all of these things can be harmful depending on whose viewpoint is in question, or what the situation is about.

Habitual tendencies run in families

A young man with a drug habit, excluded by his wealthy family for bringing them shame, for sponging off the family's money, may have exactly the same genetic tendencies as his over-achieving, successful businessman father. It's all to do with an intolerance for living in the grey: a belief in idealism,. perfectionism and a relentless fixation on one thing to the expense of all others.

The causes of habit formation are very complex. Vulnerability to addiction is written into the very DNA of some people, with various habits being found in different family members. A person’s upbringing, experiences of trauma or other hardship, can bring out vulnerabilities that would have otherwise remained invisible. Strangely enough, this also applies to virtuous habits. Those who form bad habits very quickly because of biological vulnerability are, astonishingly, the same kind of people who form good habits very quickly. It’s a kind of ‘need to focus on one thing’ that drives both.

By personality, people with very ‘focussed’ ways of thinking have an association with perfectionism and a tendency to have on-or-off thinking. Even prior to any habit arriving, such people have difficulty dealing with middle ground and compromise. Things are either one way or another. They believe they are either the best or the worst, with little room for anything in between.

Social issues also cause problem habits and corruption of character. Neighbourhoods can become decayed and derelict at the hands of some addictive scourge like gambling or drugs that arrive to rip the soul of the community, causing mental health problems, conflict, debt, violence and all manner of other sadness. On the other hand, there is also the opportunity for entire communities to become virtuous on the back of some trend of wholesome action like exercise or gardening. Remember when when people in neighbourhoods around the world volunteered to help deliver food to people in lockdown. The very activity of extending one's help outward, is what helps the person themselves. It genuinely seems to hold the people together, providing a kind of reward which is difficult for any of them to miss out on.

SABR does not see poor decisions as the failure of self discipline. It’s a common misconception to think this way. We all have free will to make choices as we wish, but addiction is not the result of poor choices alone. Anyone can make a poor choice but not everyone who makes the same poor choice becomes an addict. It is foolish to judge someone's addiction as a moral failure without understanding what specific situations, dilemmas, limitations and fears they faced.

Addictions are an extreme version of loss of character. Compelling bad habits, such as drug addiction, uncontrolled anger, or internet addiction, really eat away at a person's higher mental functions. The Qalb (Heart)- their true source of judgment and high character- becomes weakened, overriding the self control that was previously in place. This is seen in real deterioration in the way the brain activity changes.

Scanning the brain of addicts of any kind, from phone addiction to cocaine addiction, shows similar changes across the board. The emotional centres are more dominant, and there is a relative lack of activity in the frontal areas- those which deal with logic, judgement and decision making and so on.

The recovery process is about focusing on dealing with the difficult emotions rather than the action itself. Emotions and thoughts are the only currency of the conscious mind, the only thing we can observe and try to influence. It follows that if we start to direct our emotions and thoughts in the right way, we will regain our sense of control over our free will, and get more confident at making good decisions. We find a formula for beating the bad action.

The patchwork of a full life.

Taking the 7 steps of SABR together with various other techniques or tips in this program, you have the chance to develop a multi-faceted life. This is a good thing; complexity is bad when it ios overwhelming, but it is good when it is a menu of different sources of fulfilment, satisfaction and so on.

Remembrance, gratitude, mindful and diligent attention to your ambitions and habits, are a rich array of antidotes to the feelings of disconnection that can arise as people try to leave their addictions behind. SABR focuses on things that help guide the mind towards a greater self awareness, focussing on truth and compassion for oneself; not the traps of victimhood or self-righteousness that commonly catch people out.

Summary

Greater awareness of what is going on in the mind will help you to become more at ease with uncomfortable feelings and urges, allowing you to see them for what they are: just clusters of thoughts and emotions which tempt you away from the present time, toward misleading and exaggerated visions of pleasure and fears of pain. We don’t escape or deny thoughts and emotions. Rather, we lean towards them, allowing them to exist unfought.

In effect, reflection exercises, positive self awareness, challenging negative thoughts, developing physical resilience and so on- these are well designed acts that encourage awareness of the self, remembering higher purposes and meanings, and willing the self towards one’s finer qualities.

Where addiction is concerned, our greatest emotional aim is to simply observe unwanted feelings, letting them just be. We don’t react to them. Instead, we connect with the present time, and we guide the mind towards alternative focal points for our attention. Unpleasant thoughts still exist but they lose their power because you have replaced them with something more attractive and wholesome.