sobriety

Easy Does It!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

When I first got to recovery I was told not try to do everything at once. This was a process that would take time and I needed time to heal. There was a lot to learn and to assimilate into my life. I wanted to my life to change but I didn’t have to do the whole program at once: there was no schedule and no test at the end. “Easy Does It,” was often said at meetings. But really what I heard was ‘do it later’.

I have always fluctuated between going at full speed or full stop. ‘Get ‘er done!’  or ‘I’ll get it later.” As time went on, I gradually slipped more into putting things off, telling myself that things would look after themselves. I got lazy, I put it off. Tomorrow would be a better day to do it. I just don’t have the energy to do that now I would say and I would pass my spare time with little accomplished.

I have always had a tendency to procrastination, of letting things be and let the ship sail where the wind might blow. Of course I complained bitterly when I didn’t arrive where I wanted to go, but ‘whatcha gonna do?’ Life is like this I thought: a series of lousy crap and something nice once in a while.

I carried these beliefs into recovery with me. I thought that my life was over and I would never enjoy life again. I didn’t understand that I needed some action in life  in order to balance my inertia. I learned that not doing anything was really a decision to let happen to me whatever came along. I was abdicating my ability to make decisions about my life. Coming into the rooms was a first step in changing the direction of my life but I had to do the work. I might not be able to control the wind but I could still steer by adjusting my sails.

I need balance in my life. I still have to fight against procrastination. I know that when I’m not doing something I need to do it’s because I fear things not turning our as I want them, not turning out perfect, of me falling short of what should be done. I know it’s all traceable back to my ego and things not going my way. So I am learning to push forward and do what I fear. Do what is beyond my comfort zone. Do it because the results will be more to my liking than if it just happens on its own. At the same time, I don’t have to do it all at once. Slow and steady is fine. I need to put one foot ahead of the other.

Easy does it Tim, but ‘do’ it!

Feelings

/ Tim / 1 Comment

“The great part about recovery is that you can feel again. The lousy part of recovery is that you can feel again.” 

My goal, when I was still in my disease, was to numb the feelings that flowed through my head. I wanted to escape how I felt about myself, about others and about situations. I couldn’t deal with how I was feeling so I tried to eliminate them completely. Loneliness, depression, fear, anger and resentment were some of the stronger feelings I felt more or less at any time and often in a combination of two or three. I had only one way to deal with them, and near the end, even that didn’t work. I didn’t know how to live with them. I guess I missed that course in life: Dealing with Feelings.

For the first three or four months in recovery I was on the proverbial ‘pink cloud’ where everything was wonderful. Then it hit me. I had started to work on Step Four and I was realizing all of my defects of character. As the saying goes, a sober horse thief is still a horse thief. I might have been in recovery, but I was now a ball of emotions and feelings that I had to learn to manage. I had begun to feel again. I remember going on a bit too long at one meeting. Afterward, another member asked me it I had a sponsor. “Of course I do!” I replied somewhat proudly. “Maybe you should use him,” suggested the member.

It was in the heart to heart discussions with my sponsor that I first started to learn that to deal with feelings I first had to accept them. Using examples of his own life, he showed me how he worked through those strong feelings in early recovery, just as I was doing: by working with his sponsor, by talking about them and by discovering their source, the ‘exact nature’ of those feelings. Why was I angry? Who or what was I angry at? Was there threat to me? What can I do to diminish my feelings of anger? I learned how to do the same with other feelings as well.

Analysing my feelings helped to diminish their strength and power. I learned that I needed to acknowledge what I was feeling and where it was taking me. I didn’t have to allow the feeling to take me into depression or loneliness, anger or fear. I had a choice. My feelings didn’t have to dictate my reaction. If I was lonely, I could go meet a friend or pick up the phone and call someone.  I  didn’t have to wallow in loneliness, allowing it to spiral me downward into deeper and deeper sadness. Often I would just get on my motorcycle and drive and drive and say the Serenity Prayer over and over until I felt peace replacing the strong feelings that threatened my recovery.

My life is manageable today and I lived more in tranquility than chaos. The frequency of those strong feelings is diminished. Strong feelings still do come up but not as often and I know that I can’t avoid them. I have to deal with them. It’s my choice when I do so, but sooner rather than later works for me and frees me to enjoy my life and not be burdened by it. I am grateful.

 

Became Entirely Ready

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I didn’t give much time to Step Six when I first went through the steps. I didn’t think it needed a whole lot of thought or discussion. I had discovered my defects of character in Step Four and shared them in Step Five. So yes, I was ready to have them removed and move on with the program. I was still, perhaps, in the mode of getting through the steps as fast as possible: quantity over quality.

A couple of years ago I went through Step Six and Seven again with my sponsor. As part of the process I read the book, “Drop the Rock”, a Hazelton Publication. Here I came to learn that I missed two fundamental parts of Step Six when I first went through it. I got being prepared to let my Higher Power remove my defects of character. But I totally missed that in order to have those removed, I had to let them go. And I wasn’t quite ready for the new person that would be created as a result of this transformation.

Going through the first five steps had changed me. I was starting to like who I was again. I had learned to look into the mirror and love who was looking back. I thought I was doing pretty good with the whole recovery thing. And after seven months in recovery, I was. I just didn’t have the depth necessary in order to understand what ‘entirely ready’ really meant. Yes, I wanted to be rid of those character defects of arrogance, perfectionism and entitlement, to name a few. I wanted them gone. But wanting them gone and letting them go? I didn’t realize that those were two different things. I had to open my hands and let those things go. As the book says, I had to drop those rocks that were weighing me down and holding me back.

The other thing I didn’t realize at the time is something that is sort of understood, but not stated in the step.  In the same way that ‘could restore us to sanity’ in Step Two tells us that we were insane, here too there’s an understanding that I am going to be a different person when I have my defects of character removed. This I really didn’t consider the first time through the step. My character was made up partly by those defects of character that I wanted gone, so it made sense that I would be a different person at the end of this. But: I had to be willing to let go of the ‘me’ I knew for a ‘me’ that was new. In this step, I can’t hold onto the old me, I have to release it in the same way that I release the rest of the ‘rocks’ that hold me back and, at the same time, trust my Higher Power and the process of going through the steps would create a new and improved Tim.

Letting go of who and how I am still proves to be difficult. Every once in a while I find another part of me that needs to be worked on. It comes with living the Steps. I must be willing to leave behind as well as move forward. I am grateful that I have many examples of others who also live the steps and I can see the results in them. I know that my Higher Power will do the same for me.