Been going to counselling for several months now. Starting to open up more than I thought I would. Which is always a good thing. Been so self-contained for a long time that opening up is extremely hard for me to do.
Today, we talked about emotions and some other stuff. I had said that I was avoiding my feelings. Because the sadness tends to suck me down into despair. Despair then leads to depression and I'm doing my best to fight depression. I don't want to be back where I was. It's really hard and takes too long to get out of it once I'm there. So trying my hardest not to go there.
Then we talked about my trip and how things seemed surreal and just felt disconnected. He said it was because I'm probably not used to being happy and tend to shut down instead of feeling happy. Happiness can be scary to someone who isn't used to feeling it. When it shouldn't be. Everyone should be happy. Happiness is a good thing. Also, I was without any structure so I probably felt unstable being outside of my normal routine.
Stuff like that... Is stuff I wouldn't have come up with on my own and it does make a lot of sense.
So insight like that helps immensely and immeasurably.
I've been avoiding my feelings because that's all I've ever done all my life. I could never show my true feelings to anyone. So I drank instead of dealing with them. Was my way of suppressing them. But... As I discovered later on... When I started my sobriety and my recovery.... That emotions have a way of flooding in, and taking over. Especially when they've been suppressed for many years AND when you don't know how to experience them and move beyond them.
My counsellor made a good point today when he said that when you put the lid on them, they can have their way of boiling over. They have their ways of coming out when we're not ready for it, and in ways that we'd rather not have them come out. Like a wound. It'll bleed however much and however long it needs to. We can try to stop it from bleeding, but it's going to bleed, regardless.
So I'm at the stage where I'm learning about experiencing my emotions. He'd said before that we have to 'name them to tame them'. It's pretty much impossible to know HOW to deal with something when we don't know WHAT we're dealing with. I've been avoiding feeling anything for so long that it's hard for me to even know how I'm feeling, what the emotion is. In AA, I learned about 'numbing' and that is what I had been doing for so long. But the thing I have learned is that you can't 'selectively numb'. You numb one thing, you end up numbing all of it. Which explains why happiness is somewhat foreign to me. I can be happy for other people. But it's harder to be happy for myself. If that makes sense.
Like if someone I know is having a baby, or getting married... I'm happy for THEM. I can feel so happy for others that tears literally come out of my eyes. But when it comes to being happy in general, it's almost a void. Like my trip. I should have been happy. I should have been enjoying all of it. I should have gotten so much peace, relief, and enjoyment out of it. But I felt a big disconnect. I know that I do have feelings. Just letting myself feel them is something new. Knowing how to feel them so that I can move on from them quickly is something new too. I can admit that I don't know how to. And it's something I'm working on.
Someone, the other night, told me that I need to relax. I do. I know I do. I shouldn't be taking life so seriously ALL the time. I should learn how to relax, how to have fun, and how to be happy.
We talked about compassion and how I have an easier time being compassionate to others and the hardest time being compassionate to myself.
I want to really start focusing more on these things and becoming better. I know this is what my recovery is supposed to be about. Just I had dropped everything. When I started doubting myself. I gotta work towards getting back to where I was before my trip because I hadn't felt like that in a really long time. I guess there are periods when I feel really good about the things I'm doing and can actually see real progress being made. Those are the times I'm really feeling the best. I feel a lot of my happiness (When I feel it... More like satisfaction) is from achievement and success. The more I achieve, the better I feel. I always have.
I used to want to do well in school to make others proud of me. I guess it stopped mattering whether or not they were proud of me when most of them never seemed to notice what I was doing or how far I had come. If they did, they sure were not acknowledging it. I think it was the acknowledgement I wanted more than anything. For many years I felt like nothing I did ever really mattered to anyone. It goes with one of the 8 basic needs (the need to contribute).
Anyway, I guess it all comes down to having a lot to think about and things to consider. I mean really consider. The probable reason why I am withdrawing into myself is because I need to so I can think of strategies and set myself up to succeed. I need to build my strengths so that I will be stronger moving forward with the rest of my life. I know it's kind of late to be learning all these things. But, it's better late than never.
Today, we talked about emotions and some other stuff. I had said that I was avoiding my feelings. Because the sadness tends to suck me down into despair. Despair then leads to depression and I'm doing my best to fight depression. I don't want to be back where I was. It's really hard and takes too long to get out of it once I'm there. So trying my hardest not to go there.
Then we talked about my trip and how things seemed surreal and just felt disconnected. He said it was because I'm probably not used to being happy and tend to shut down instead of feeling happy. Happiness can be scary to someone who isn't used to feeling it. When it shouldn't be. Everyone should be happy. Happiness is a good thing. Also, I was without any structure so I probably felt unstable being outside of my normal routine.
Stuff like that... Is stuff I wouldn't have come up with on my own and it does make a lot of sense.
So insight like that helps immensely and immeasurably.
I've been avoiding my feelings because that's all I've ever done all my life. I could never show my true feelings to anyone. So I drank instead of dealing with them. Was my way of suppressing them. But... As I discovered later on... When I started my sobriety and my recovery.... That emotions have a way of flooding in, and taking over. Especially when they've been suppressed for many years AND when you don't know how to experience them and move beyond them.
My counsellor made a good point today when he said that when you put the lid on them, they can have their way of boiling over. They have their ways of coming out when we're not ready for it, and in ways that we'd rather not have them come out. Like a wound. It'll bleed however much and however long it needs to. We can try to stop it from bleeding, but it's going to bleed, regardless.
So I'm at the stage where I'm learning about experiencing my emotions. He'd said before that we have to 'name them to tame them'. It's pretty much impossible to know HOW to deal with something when we don't know WHAT we're dealing with. I've been avoiding feeling anything for so long that it's hard for me to even know how I'm feeling, what the emotion is. In AA, I learned about 'numbing' and that is what I had been doing for so long. But the thing I have learned is that you can't 'selectively numb'. You numb one thing, you end up numbing all of it. Which explains why happiness is somewhat foreign to me. I can be happy for other people. But it's harder to be happy for myself. If that makes sense.
Like if someone I know is having a baby, or getting married... I'm happy for THEM. I can feel so happy for others that tears literally come out of my eyes. But when it comes to being happy in general, it's almost a void. Like my trip. I should have been happy. I should have been enjoying all of it. I should have gotten so much peace, relief, and enjoyment out of it. But I felt a big disconnect. I know that I do have feelings. Just letting myself feel them is something new. Knowing how to feel them so that I can move on from them quickly is something new too. I can admit that I don't know how to. And it's something I'm working on.
Someone, the other night, told me that I need to relax. I do. I know I do. I shouldn't be taking life so seriously ALL the time. I should learn how to relax, how to have fun, and how to be happy.
We talked about compassion and how I have an easier time being compassionate to others and the hardest time being compassionate to myself.
I want to really start focusing more on these things and becoming better. I know this is what my recovery is supposed to be about. Just I had dropped everything. When I started doubting myself. I gotta work towards getting back to where I was before my trip because I hadn't felt like that in a really long time. I guess there are periods when I feel really good about the things I'm doing and can actually see real progress being made. Those are the times I'm really feeling the best. I feel a lot of my happiness (When I feel it... More like satisfaction) is from achievement and success. The more I achieve, the better I feel. I always have.
I used to want to do well in school to make others proud of me. I guess it stopped mattering whether or not they were proud of me when most of them never seemed to notice what I was doing or how far I had come. If they did, they sure were not acknowledging it. I think it was the acknowledgement I wanted more than anything. For many years I felt like nothing I did ever really mattered to anyone. It goes with one of the 8 basic needs (the need to contribute).
Anyway, I guess it all comes down to having a lot to think about and things to consider. I mean really consider. The probable reason why I am withdrawing into myself is because I need to so I can think of strategies and set myself up to succeed. I need to build my strengths so that I will be stronger moving forward with the rest of my life. I know it's kind of late to be learning all these things. But, it's better late than never.
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