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09-18-2008, 11:31 PM

# 10 (permalink)

serenityqueen

Attitude of Gratitude

Join Date: Sep 2007

Location: Dayton, Ohio

Posts: 2,305

WELCOME TO RECOVERY & CONGRATULATIONS ON 90 DAYS!

I'm sure you're wondering why I wrote Welcome to Recovery and why I didn't put some cutsey Congratulations Picture.

When we're using, we don't experience normal feelings. Our feelings are mostly anger, guilt, shame, self loathing . . . but after we are clean for awhile and get into the actual Recovery stage, all of the normal feelings we are meant to feel suddenly appear. And since you and I both started using at a pretty young age and used for many, many years, those feelings have been stuffed down inside and numbed for a very long time. One minute you're up, one minute your down, the next minute you can feel like you're swinging sideways.

The Social Anxiety is completely normal. When we're at work, even when we were using, we knew we had to put on the "work face." While we are there, our main focus is work, we talk about work, we do our job and then when there's time, we throw in a little socializing. And also, us addicts have had to learn to basically be actors/actresses in order to survive. We adapted to the situation around us. When we're with family, we're one person, at work we're another and then when we're out getting high and running the streets with other addicts, we're someone completely different. It's kind of like survival of the fittest. We adapt to fit into the situation we are in at the time so we please those around us in order to feel accepted. So when we get into Recovery, we're finding out who we really are and it can be pretty uncomfortable because we just don't know who this person is that has been medicating their feelings for so many years.

I still remember the last few threads you started before you got clean. You had such guilt, shame, anger, self loathing . . . all of those feelings just waiting for us at our bottoms. I'm glad you felt them. . . .if you didn't you'd still be using.

You mentioned that you were excited earlier and now kinda sad fo some reason. I do the exact same thing when I come to another milestone in my Recovery. I like to compare it to when we're waiting for Christmas to get here. We look forward to it with such anticiation and joy, all of the build up and then after it gets here, we're let down. . . even if we got every gift we had on our wish list, all of the family who we wanted to celebrate with came home and Christmas Dinner was perfection.

If the Halloween Party is going to be a "safe one" I hope you do go. Put together some crazy get up for a costume and just go be a kid again! Nothing says you have to stay the entire time.

And I have to add that I too, am very proud of you. I have been Blessed to watch you go from a lost soul to someone who is now living for the first time in many, many years.

God Bless You My Dear Sweet Chiy,
Judy