Sober Rosa Feels All The Feels

Emotional Support
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@RosaCanDo I struggle with these thoughts too and the guilt and shame then comes over me for having these thoughts. They are not actions anymore though. Before I got sober I would have those thoughts and carry them out. Now I just have the thoughts but then use my sobriety tools to ensure I dont act on them.

What you said about telling your work from home husband that you had to run errands and then go buy alcohol and sneak it home and drink it alone…that was exactly me!!! I would go so far as to empty a non alcoholic wine bottle and decant real wine into it so that the family didnt realise I was drinking real wine again.

I know you wrote this thread a long time ago but it has been so inspiring to go on this journey with you. Thank you for sharing with us :blush:

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@RosaCanDo I just reached this post! OMG! You reached a whole year of sobriety! I have gone on this journey from the beginning of this thread and have seen how much growth and change you have experienced! I am so proud of you and your achievement! Well done :heart:

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Thank you so much for your kind words and for sharing how you can relate. It honestly never gets old hearing from people here that their experience is similar and for that I am grateful you responded. Much appreciated! We really aren’t alone. I still have thoughts/feelings romanticizing drinking at times, usually when I’m struggling with my mental health or chronic pain, but I am so glad to have built healthier ways to cope. Hugs your way!

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THIS! It so sums up what I was saying above beautifully.

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Yes, we are always moving the goalpost, aren’t we? Now that I achieved xyz, I can work on abc…and so on.

We get focused on the striving, which keeps us from being present.

Good stuff there Rosa, thanks for sharing!!

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Heads up - long read.

This morning, while perusing old journals I found an odd page with seriously messy writing and it was an interesting read. It must have been from either my last relapse or a prior one but based on the content I think it’s the last one. I’ll post a pic but it reads as follows:

“Tips on Moderation
Did I get your attention? I hope so.

Celebrations, sure!
My dog died, I need it.
My dad has major surgery. Yup.
I usually drink while I cook.
It’s sunny out! It’s snowing!

All reasons to drink.
The big red flag was when I stopped counting my days. Was working on my mental health issues more than alcohol dependence.

“Fuck it,” maybe should have been the biggest red flag.

Lots. So much. Why can’t I stop myself.”

Well, damn! Am I grateful I felt the need to write that down in the midst of a relapse or what!?! Pretty poignant stuff, nothing new of course, but here are my thoughts on it. I said the big red flag was when I stopped counting my days. Well I am still not counting my days (technically I have a counter going but not actively doing so). So what changed? I believe what changed was that I got back to working on myself in a whole person, whole hearted way. Instead of saying, oh, this is the real problem, let me just focus on that, I tried something different. I wasn’t doing as much work on my tendencies toward alcohol dependence aka binging whenever I found the right “reason.” I set that aside thinking I was safe if I worked on the root causes of alcohol use and that simply isn’t the case. I have to look at my whole self and not just what I perceive as my “problems,” either.

Some of what I changed:
-Accepted that I have a substance use disorder in conjunction with my mental health issues, one is not more important to deal with than another.
-Sought professional help for both my mental health and substance use issues.
-Am working on building my feelings of self worth and self love and identifying my strengths.
-Looked at a whole person approach to working on being a better me with a growth mindset not a fixed mindset.
-Started to work on my codependency with my partner.
-Confronted my trauma history and shared it with my loved ones after hiding it for 20 years - big one!
-Started to look hard at my emotional triggers, how to identify my feelings, and also look at patterns in how I respond to them.

I am so glad I found this information recently and posted about it. Here is the link to that:

It’s ok to be triggered, being triggered is a normal part of life

“It’s what you DO when triggered which makes the difference between growing and staying stuck.”

I think I had not done the work on identifying emotional reactions to triggers and how they had been connected to a draw to use alcohol in the past. My list of reasons to drink in my mid-relapse journal entry was not connected to that in particular, just random stuff - though not wrong in a general sense, what reason does one ever need, right? It’s about the reasons not to drink. But I do think how I react to a trigger is a really important thing for me to look at in general to help me be a better me. Whether it’s how I respond to my partner, how I treat myself, how I treat others, etc., it’s important to me to look at it in a balanced way (not over analyzing but staying curious).

I’m glad I took the time to write this out. Still initial thoughts but it was worthwhile. Keep a journal, folks!!! :heartpulse:

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Wow, this note is treasure. Than you for sharing it with us.

This happened for me in steps, like I can tell you different situations which directly sent me into wanting to numb me and I am blessed to have been given the chance to get a foot between thinking emotions and actions. Like a movie in front of my eyes and I observed it instead of acting on it. In one situation I was caught in the middle of a traffic jam in my car which somehow have me time to figure out what happened in my head at this very moment.

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Thanks, amiga. I was a bit surprised when I found it, as you can imagine, but it is important. And thank you for sharing, too. I think for me it usually played out more in a dissociative way where something would trigger me emotionally and I wouldn’t recognize it right away and then eventually I would robotically go through the motions of obtaining booze and drinking it.

(Sorry @Diamonster i just kept writing here, it’s not exactly directed to you but just didn’t start a new post)
I went back and read my initial post again and was like DUH…it’s all right there, I knew back then basically what I needed to do but it really took me so long to take action and continue to follow through on certain things. Like the online therapy I did and went through three different therapists and got super frustrated. It was the deep part of the pandemic, and I ended making some progress with the third one. I did go to the doctor, but I didn’t follow through with my wellness plan and I’ve regressed with symptoms. And it took me forever to really work on some emotional stuff, especially with my husband. Now I see I am beating myself up a bit. Where I am now is because of what I was realizing then back in August of 2020 (:grimacing::flushed::sweat:) and even with some set backs I keep going and don’t stop. :smiley: I need to read through this whole thread again. I also was trying to figure out when I wrote that note and my best guess is mid summer of 2020 when I hit a real low point. The thing about my dog dying threw me off big time, I didn’t have a major relapse after Chucho died, but then I realized Lupe had had her major health scare in 2019 and I was pretty obsessed with worrying about my dogs dying. Yup, that makes sense.

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Things to think/journal about…maybe share some of that here.

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And things to remember.

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Exactly! And such is life, at least for me. We all progress on our own timeline and each is valid.

Love your longer post above, and your journal entry. It seems all the ‘answers’ are always waiting on us…we just have to get there. :heart:

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Thanks for sharing this Rosa. I’ll try to journal again. Never got very far so far. As to the quote: for me there’s no difference. Dependence is part of my mental health. I know you know that too. X

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Thanks Sassy. I really appreciated the post with “things I wish I had known sooner,” like that things can hurt for a long time and that it’s normal for old feelings to resurface. The latter is actually a big lesson I received this year and has helped a lot when the shame spiral starts. I’m not starting over because old hurts come up again or I see myself falling back on old patterns. But that learning curve that can happen if we keep pushing is the beautiful thing to recognize in those moments of hurt. (But also in appreciating moments of joy!)

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And maybe that’s what I was trying to say, too. My approach wasn’t working, anyways!

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I have seen similar messages from various sources and it always rings true:

“Motivation is something that comes and goes, but being dedicated to a better, healthier version of yourself, that is something you can control. Dedication over motivation all day long. It is nice to have motivation, but when the motivation fades over time, which it does, you still have to be dedicated to being a healthier version of yourself.”

This just happens to be a quote from a local news report about a man who made incremental changes to lose a significant amount of weight and improve his health, but it can be applied to anything, sobriety/recovery included. Motivation and willpower alone were never enough for me to not drink and to not take better care of myself overall. Dedication is one word, it could be called discipline, determination, etc. Not picking up a drink is step one, but what I do instead counts for so much from a long-term wellness perspective. I keep saying I am going to do x, y, z, and I start and stop new healthy habits. What I’ve been missing, I think, is more focus on finding the infrastructure, routine and dedication to be healthier, striking a balance and making those incremental changes so I don’t burn out on things, too.

The article also talked about changing things up and keeping activities interesting and fresh. I really like that thought! A resolution of sorts that I have this year is to do something creative every day, no matter how small, and I kind of started in December and am seeing benefits, for sure.

As a self-proclaimed recovering perfectionist, I find myself diving in to all the changes I want to make too quickly and getting overwhelmed, or on the other hand feeling like I can’t do what I’m striving to do “perfectly” so I just procrastinate. Incremental change is going to be a key for me to make some healthy lifestyle changes that help me with my physical as well as mental health. I plan to look into SMART tools around goals (SMART stands for goal-setting that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely, but in the recovery world the acronym is Self-Management and Recovery Training and I was trained in using them both in the business management application and personal recovery programs in a previous life).

It’s great that I have some solid activities and resources that I engage in and can rely on daily, but I do tend to slide in other areas like diet and exercise that will be really important to improve for my challenges with my health - I’ve felt stagnant and even slipping in areas and I know it’s crucial to my recovery to work on my discipline and routine, not just rely on motivation. Especially when wintertime gets to be such a bear! Now’s the time to get on it instead of looking back at another winter of hibernation and low mood. Here I go! Whole-heartedly and with an eye on whole health, day by day with a glance to the future, as well. Glad to be here with all my amigos and welcome to new and returning folks. Thanks for reading. - Rosa :heartpulse:

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Yeah, willpower is like a muscle we can strengthen but eventually will give way after some time. Maybe in the afternoon. I am having hard times with motivation and willpower especially in the light of letting go, being gentle to myself. Where is the balance. Not comparing myself to others will be a goal for my this year. Which might mean stepping away from TS also, eventually, I mean from certain kind of threads.
Integrity is what comes to my mind also which is represented by the element fire. Like Menno often says, recovery is a journey, lifelong. No sprint but a marathon.

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Yes! To all of this. This is on my mind, as well. We can be so hard on ourselves. Just like we need to try and meet people where they are in offering support, we can do the same for/with ourselves.

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Love the ‘instead’ addition. :heartbeat: As my healthy lifestyle journey continues (which at this point is simply ‘life’), I have worked in a lot of new habits and ways of living and let others go. Balance. Rarely a strong suit of mine, so I get it. I definitely struggle at being all in, then off. But I guess I look at this more as some of the stuff sticks long term and others is just not meant for me at this time. Idk. I am all for trying things on and see if they spark happiness and joy…especially re physical activity and food nourishment. I don’t have the years left to be wasting on things that don’t serve my soul.

Much the same with threads here, @anon74766472. I don’t visit / engage in various threads for similar reasons I think. Some threads are overwhelming for me (check in being one and IDK why people send newbies there, it heightens anxious feelings in my body, but that is just me), the workout ones, food ones…bring stuff up I don’t need to deal with here. For me, keeping my presence more recovery / sobriety focused works. Everyone is different in what they are looking for / needing / ready to receive. But if it isn’t feeling like a positive add, I let it go. Again, idk, just where I am at.

Love your musings Rosa!! :heart: And Diamonster :gem:!

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Yes to this. I know for me, I need to gain mastery in one thing before I can fully devote myself to the next. Others experience may be different.

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You’re absolutely right there.

In terms of a SMART goal, I haven’t mapped anything out quite yet and just started talking about it in therapy but I can come back and post at some point. Off the top of my head, a super basic one would be to walk my dog everyday and start walking on my treadmill afterward. It’s specific and it’s relevant to getting more movement, attainable especially because I can go directly from the dog walk (which I already do most days) to the treadmill in my basement, and I can think about measurable goals for length of time, incline, and speed, as well as some kind of measure around impact on migraine frequency, etc.

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SMART goals take me right back to nursing school. And to nursing practise as well. Financing health care is built around it these days as government and health insurance companies want measurable attainable specific results, after specified amounts of treatments, in a specified amount of time.

But in mental health they can be bloody hard (if not impossible) to formulate. And especially in the treatment of complicated mental health problems like my own. Starting Pesso group therapy my therapists couldn’t even give me an idea of the time it would take to get results. A couple of years maybe? And how will I know I’m finished? So I’m curious how the insurance company feels about it.

Looking only at addiction I can see stuff a little bit clearer. By aiming for a next (fourth) full year of sobriety I set a Specific Measurable goal. I know it is Attainable for me as I have the previous experience of going a day, a week, a month, and previous full years. It’s totally Relevant because I have learned the importance remaining Sober for me has. And it is tied to a specific Time (June 8 2023) when I can evaluate the last year and see if I want to adjust my goal for the next year, like trying controlled drinking for a change (hell no!!!).

So I think that’s a reasonable SMART goal for me. There is however a lot of smaller SMART goals needed to make it work. Like how to work on my physical fitness. How to work on my mental health. How to work on my social skills and interactions. How to develop myself further professionally. And more. This is not staying sober, this is actually my journey of discovery. Hard work. Lots of SMART goals to formulate. But good and very useful to think about it in that way.

@RosaCanDo: but what is your actual smart goal? I see at least 4 possible different ones already in what you write. It’s complicated stuff my friend x

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