Originally Posted by Rose56
My expectations sure get me into trouble. Cause me more pain than is necessary. I also expect myself to be perfect, MG, and boy do I get it from myself when I am not. I am very interested in the black ache concept, and what people do for themself to ease the pain. WHen you are feeling empty, alone, and like no one else really cares about you. How do you get out of that by yourself? I have tried logic, I know in my head that I am loved, but that doesn't ease the feeling in my gut. Sometimes I call someone and it helps, but often, it is nighttime and I am alone and I don't know how to comfort myself. SOmetimes I cry and sometime I just go to bed to escape. What works for You? I will also tell you that I sleep with a teddy bear every night. It was my son's bear and I love to cuddle him.
For my "black ache", there are the things I do at the time, and there are the long term things I work on to lessen and possibly remove a lot of what causes it.
Some of the things I do at the time that lonely, depressed, unhappy feeling comes on me are read my Al-Anon literature. If I can't find something to relate to what is going on in one book, I go to another. One thing I have done for myself is to invest in a lot of lit. I pray. If my head is kicking my butt, and I can't sleep, I pray for God to remove obsessive thinking. I meditate. I may accomplish a few minutes of concentration, then have to start over. It helps to calm me. Mainly, I try to get my brain to focus on anything healthy to get it off a self destructive path. Eventually I can feel better.
The biggest thing I have learned to do, once I get through all the crazies, is to inventory my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Getting to the root of these things is the key to fixing them. There are a lot of twisted and downright wrong beliefs that I held as true when I came to Al-Anon. They caused me to get my needs met in inappropriate ways. That in turn caused me to be ashamed, and to hate myself. I would beat myself up very regularly. I didn't know why I just could quit doing the things that I was ashamed of.
I didn't know how to change myself until I began working the steps. Learning to dig beyond the behaviors and get to the root of what was going on was a new concept. One that actually worked. When I got to the root of what was driving me to do those inappropriate behaviors, I realized that I had a need that no one had taught me to meet in a healthy way. I understood why I couldn't "just quit" the unhealthy behaviors. I needed to find new ones to replace them. Just quitting old behaviors left me with unmet needs. Eventually I would have to meet them the only way I knew how. Identifying those needs gave me an opportunity to find new, healthy ways to meet them.
That was the beginning of my long term solution to the "black ache." It is an ongoing process. It works, and I am getting better. My worst day in Al-Anon today is better than my best day pre Al-Anon. I wanted relief for years from that viscious cycle of self defeating behavior, shame, and hopelessness. Al-Anon gave me the tools to get it, and I am using them. Hugs, Magic