I was used to not being in touch with myself, my body, my emotions, my instincts.
Anytime I would have a negative or difficult emotion, I would turn to alcohol to cope, to find peace and quiet, to shut the world off.
I know I fall somewhere on the alcoholic spectrum. I don’t wanna go further down this rabbit hole. But every time I feel a difficult emotion, I crave alcohol to drown my pain into it.
The problem is, I’m going through a bad breakup (in which I left my partner of 5 years), but my heart is broken as well. I feel alone, disoriented, lost and so bad of having broke his heart as well.
I’m so sorry to hear about your breakup and your pain. I know it was caused by your addiction - the same was true for me - but that doesn’t make it any easier.
In addiction we give up everything for the addiction. It’s a dance with alcohol (or drugs, or sex, or whatever the addiction is) and only a dance with alcohol. Every other dance partner is second or third or thousandth place, and the relationship with alcohol always comes first. The result is selfishness and chaos. The result is breakups, pain, betrayal, even death. It is a dance with the devil.
The solution is learning to live a healthy life (which for us means a sober life). It is possible.
For my emotions, I still find they are intense at times but they have calmed as I have practiced my sober skills. My sober skills include daily accountability check-ins with my Daily Sobriety Renewal partner (he’s in my addiction recovery group; we call each other every morning), and also daily voicemails to my sponsor. I also do prayer and meditation. I do journaling and recovery readings also.
That combination of activities, for me, helps me to keep my mind and my expectations clearer and more balanced, and I find it prevents a lot of the intense emotional swings I used to get.
I do exercise also. Working out my emotions at the gym is helpful.
I didn’t start doing all those things at once. The first thing I did was to start attending meetings and spending time daily on Talking Sober. There’s a gratitude thread that I like to post on, where I focus on my gratitude about the challenges I face and the opportunities that come to me through them:
I also like to scan the list of threads and provide supportive comments to others.
This thread has lots of good books and groups too:
Good job reaching out. Learning to cope with uncomfortable emotions without alcohol as a crutch or numbing agent is well… uncomfortable. But the faster you feel em and move thru em the faster you move on. The positive thing is you arent stuck and wallowing if you move thru em. Pray, cry, run, walk, ice cream anything but picking up
@Isabelle1 I am struggling my emotions to. I would drink to numb my emotions, or drink to pretend to have emotions.
We will get through this. Stay strong.
Sorry to hear about your break up. What a painful time for you, but you can get through this sober.
What helps me is Alcoholics Anonymous. The fellowship has gotten me through some extremely hard times over the past 6 years. They told me early on - feeling my emotions will not kill me but picking could. That was an eye opener.
Wishing you the best on your journey!
I remember what helped me was to realise that alcohol had nothing to add to any situation. It’s got nothing to do w your breakup. It doesn’t help you understand or get through your feelings which is necessary, it just distances you from yourself.
Hard feelings are hard, some are very hard, nothing to do but to experience them. There are no short cuts. But you can learn healthier habits to make dealing w life easier.
Therapy journalling exercise meditation keeping a tidy house artistic and creative endeavours building good relationships. All this helps. But you cannot escape your feelings and beginning to face them, the old and the new bad feelings, is the Big Starting Point in recovery.
Mindfulness and compassion meditations help me a lot with that. There is also a recovery programm I attend daily that is based on buddhist principles of dealing with emotions: Recovery Dharma
I can relate, I never realized how much emotions and feelings I stuffed down with my drinking. I have been sober for almost two years and still have trouble sitting with my feelings. I drank on good or bad days just because I did not want to feel anything or be present with my emotions. I still feel I have an empty hole and hoping I do not fill it with another addiction. Learning to be present and using coping skills I am learning from AA. Do not get yourself overwhelmed,one day at a time.
Going through a breakup is hard. Sending hugs and comforting vibes
Already lot of good advice given, I can echo all of it. I went (and still go) to psychotherapy to help me through my breakup and divorce 3 years ago. It helped me to sort my feelings, to notice their change, to get in touch with my needs and to let go. Here on TS I learned on a deep level that feelings come and go, so the hardest, painful, sadest feelings will pass too. There is no shortcut but there are lots of tools to make letting go a bit easier.
What helped me was lerning to focus on myself, my needs, what little things I can DO to make the day a bit brighter. As I tend to overthink and then spiral I turned to just doing. When emotional turmoil was peaking my goto for about 1,5 years was deep cleaning the toilet. Instant reward, concentration needed, one task done, focus changed from thinking/feeling to doing/feeling different. I journalled a lot, had angry powerwalks, discussed imaginery talks with my pillow, learned to pamper myself. A scented candle and a 15 minutes meditation e.g. from insight timer switched my focus to present, which I still do. @JazzyS is a big fan of comedy and laughter, I’m grateful for her postings which often remind me that funny videos ARE a gamechanger, at least for the moment.
It’s a hard time, be kind to yourself
I very much hope you don’t mind too much, but that cracked me up so much. It is so true! When my stuff is sorted out perfectly you know I am going through something
So what had help me a alot is doing a scale journal. Each time you feel a certain way you write in ur scale journal 1st you’ll rate your emotions and/or feelings from 1 being the best day ever and 10 being the worse day ever and you just write it can be a letter to s.o or just a journal entry just write until that feeling goes away completely. It works wonders for me.
