Aaah, this

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difficultiesA helpful posting of a friend of mine on Facebook spins my mind around: yes, I’m having difficulty with sobriety – not that I want to run off and drink but I am starting to doubt the use of it and that would be I guess step one I guess – so I thought I was doing all kinds of things wrong. But maybe I am having difficulty because I am doing it right. Because I am not drinking. 🙂

Short post, need to be off.

xx, Feeling

17 thoughts on “Aaah, this”

  2. This is really a good post!
    I have been thinking about this.
    Drinking made things SEEM easier, but that was a lie.
    Now that I am sober, many things in life are hard, but easier.
    If that makes sense.
    Which it doesn’t.
    xo
    Wendy

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    • No, Wendy, you make perfect sense. The fewer steps it takes to deal with something, the easier it probably is.

      “Something happens -> Deal with it as best you can” is only two steps. “Something happens -> Drink -> Then deal with it as best you can” has three steps.

      Therefore, drinking adds an extra step into any situation. And since it’s harder to deal with anything effectively while drinking, it also adds an additional layer of difficulty.

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  3. In my early days, it helped to think of it this way, as long as I was sober…I was doing it right. I couldn’t think beyond that even though there were times that I felt my skin didn’t fit or that I wasn’t working a proper program or reading enough or that “Certainly I should be feeling like ____________ by now right?” which made me afraid I was going to relapse…because many people told me if I wasn’t doing this or that I was DOOMED to fail.

    Then I thought, ‘Wait…as long as I’m sober it really doesn’t matter!”

    I found that there was plenty of time to perfect my new life…there wasn’t any rush. I could just do what felt right, in the moment, as long as I didn’t drink. It really did help me get through some very uncomfortable and difficult times.

    Sherry

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    • Aaah, that ‘I should be feeling like …… by now’ is a very familiair thing. And yes, it is a thought which comes from the addict within because it is in the long term driving me to drink because it makes me feel inadequate and stupid.
      Thank you Sherry!
      xx, Feeling

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  4. This is great, Feeling. Also, I think it relates back to your earlier post that the highs are higher and the lows are lower…. Which means the difficult is something we’re not ignoring any longer, which makes it harder (sometimes), but the good thing is we’re Not Ignoring the Difficult any longer, right? Go, Us! …. And another thought: Sometimes the right thing Is the hard thing. And that’s okay, too.

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    • Yes, it does relate back. And somehow, because I had no problems with sobriety through the year I suddenly think ‘I’m doing it all wrong now!’ And that immediate jump from ‘difficult’ to ‘I am wrong’ is something to took at too. 🙂
      Thank you for your support. 🙂
      xx, Feeling

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  5. Just doing a quick check in. My journey in recovery has been way more interesting than my drinking years. Keeping the focus on growing in my life was my saving grace. I’m not an addict trying to be sober/live sober. I am an incredible person with incredible talents and I matter here on planet Earth. Drinking (excessively, in the past) is only one part of me. I have much to offer this world. Get busy living. You have much to offer. Written with love, Lisa

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    • Thank you Lisa. 🙂 Yes, I need to hang on to that: ‘recovery has been more interesting than drinking’. It has been. 🙂 I have learned more in the past 11 months than in the whole 5 years in which the addiction really took over.
      No entrance in the ‘get busy living’ yet though. :-/ Well, time will tell.
      xx, Feeling

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  7. I had some sort of comment F-up the first time, so I’ll try this again.

    You are the person most into spirituality that I know. Have you ever heard of “soul retrieval,” or the process or bringing back soul parts that were lost due to trauma or neglect? Please tell me what you know about this…

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    • Ghegheghe, spiritual, hmmm, I’ve looked up some definitions, seems like a nice description for the search I’m caught up in. :-).
      No, I have not heard those exact words, but I have experienced it lately. I have experienced it with letting go of shame on certain subject, I felt that parts of me which had split (?) at the moment of the, well, I guess you can call it traumatic experience since there was a split, came back.
      Years ago I did a group course at my therapist, the subject was ‘betrayal, revenge and re(whatever the word is where you make good). He said that people often split / disassociate when they are betrayed – it is my assumption that one can call that (part of the soul) loss. Revenge keeps people from splitting/dissassociating. The anger and focus in the revenge keeps the parts which were falling apart in the overwhelm, together. That’s what anger is for: keep us together when we fall apart.
      So what I learned and experienced is that when the person who is betrayed and the person who betrayed meet and speak their heart, recognise what they did wrong, appologize for that and by doing so and recognising the other – there is reparation and soul repair.
      Also, as said before, I learned that learning about shame, how it works, where it latches on in me, how it feels, and letting go of it, understanding all sites of a situation, helps me to retrieve what was lost and feel (more) ‘whole’. Does it make sense?
      Separate from that there is soul loss. But I believe that it total. Don’t want to go there. It is not a nice place. Google and check out the ‘photo’s’ and you’ll know what I mean. It sounds funny but my therapist once ‘solved’ a mild case of soul loss in me by saying something by which I felt threatened and that brought me right back in my body. Normally he would do a haptonomy (? is that a word?) excercise with somebody to make them aware of their body again. I assume the link between body and soul is gone in soul loss. At least that’s how it felt, well, after I came back. Before it was just this endless misery, bleakness, no salvation, no light, no darkness, not even the familiar black pit was around :-D. Ghegheghe, eeeeeh, nasty place to be.
      I hope somewhere in this there is an answers to your question? Ooh, I have a book (surprise!) from Judith Lewis on trauma and recovery. It is/was said to be a very good book. What I remember of it most is the standard way in which trauma is mainly covered up. But you might want to start with something lighter like ‘Drama of the gifted child’ from Allice Miller if you want to read up in this area. That book tought me that I can take my own experiences serious and do not have to explain them (away) with Freudian nonsense. Also it very clearly explains why children want and NEED to be liked in order to survive… and therefor ‘agree to’ abuse / learn to think that it is normal. 😦
      One warning: before somebody has several years of therapy I would not go into regression therapy. That can be dangerous on an empty stomach. I’ve done holotrophic breathwork, not from Grof himself but my therapist had trained with him and was a legit practitioner. It is an substance free way of changing the state of our minds and (re-) entering traumatic situations. Again, not on an ’empty stomach’ – it takes guts and some stability and acceptance of and affection with the darkness to do this.
      I also did ayahuasca ceremonies – but that obviously is not substance free. :-). Just want to mention that next to quitting drinking, the ayahuasca ceremonies are amongst the best things I have done in my life. But as in everything; set and setting are important and the ceremony part of a serious ayahuasquero is important.
      Well, that’s it. Hope it brings you something to work with and please let me know if this was what you were looking for.
      xx, Feeling

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      • Thank you. While I’m not sure I believe in “souls” or anything spiritual, I do understand metaphors. And one metaphor I understand is the idea of a soul (ethical self) splitting off or breaking away in a trauma, like safety glass breaks into pieces on impact to save the person inside the car from life-threatening harm.

        I’ve come to consider that I’ve done a decent job getting the engine and even the AC and radio running again, but I may need to replace the windshield.

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