When I was trying to get some sort of sense of a higher power, it was just faith in other people who had gone before me, a sort of strength that came from 'if they can I can'.
Now it is just belief that I can change. I have a choice over how I respond to things in my life. I can really relate to your post because even when I got to a stage of being happy not drinking I still had all this sh;t in my head which I needed to work through. It's a massive work in progress but stuff like CBT, SMART and various books on the subject are helping.
Kinda related to the higher power thing... Susan Jeffer's wrote about the 'higher self' which is a nice way of thinking of the better part of ourselves, our potential in a way. I found a lot of her stuff related quite well to addiction issues. The chatterbox concept relates quite well to AVRT anyway.