The Way Out Podcast

We had Darren Littlejohn on episode 176 two and half years ago to talk about his first book, The 12 Step Buddhist and he’s back to talk about his latest work Compassionate Recovery: Mindful Healing for Trauma and Addictions. The importance and need for the work contained in the aforementioned book by my friend Darren cannot be understated. To paraphrase Darren and to attempt to encapsulate his latest work, compassion and mindfulness is in so many ways the direction, it is the journey, it is the result, it is the manifestation, it is the fruition of much of what we’re trying to achieve in Recovery. Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACES, trauma, and addiction cause emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual dysregulation that are very often well outside our window of tolerance. When this occurs, we resort to counterproductive thoughts and behaviors, that turn into patterns, that cause a negative feedback loop of deepening counterproductive behaviors. Addiction then, is on a spectrum and recovery too, is on a s