Thread: Robby's Thread
View Single Post
Old 04-06-2013, 08:02 PM
  # 331 (permalink)  
fini
Member
 
fini's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2012
Location: canada
Posts: 7,241
I was referring to the discomfort that people, in general, feel when they hold conflicting beliefs.

I get that in the realm of the sublime or spiritual that we can hold seemingly conflicting beliefs without discomfiture (e.g. it's a particle and a wave), but we're talking about mundane psychological tools. It's not like art that can be both ugly and beautiful, it's more like an apple that can't also be an orange.


oh crumbs, let me jump in, though i don't "do" AVRT per se, just have a crazy alcoholic voice-urge that's reactionary

SoberKnitter
if i understand correctly, we're not talking about conflicting beliefs, or apples and oranges, which are both fruits, same category.
the AA sobriety and AVRT are different categories, nothing to compare. one is a tool, the other a "belief", if you will.

for myself, i have come to "believe" that yes, there is such a thing as alcoholism, yes, i have it, and it doesn't have terrifically much to do with the drinking of alcohol.

but that took me a while to see it that way. started with the morning epiphany one day of "holy s88t, i'm a drunk!" meandered from there through hundreds of conversations on my old LR forum with many folk, most of them there for the duration, to understanding, for myself, that yes, that meant, to me, that i'm an an alcoholic with an "ism".

and here's the kicker, since you talked about embracing: i couldn't embrace my sobriety whole-heartedly until i could embrace my alcoholism, so to speak. which does NOT mean i love it or am thrilled to have it, but it is definitely beyond being resigned to it or grudgingly accepting.

it was all a process, and changes in view of my own experiences. and it wasn't all pretty or straightforward.
none of it may be so for you.
for me (have i mentioned this before ), i could, for example, relate this to the difference i experienced in quitting smoking and drinking. AVRT could be successfully used for both, but at no point did i see anything in me that i might conceivably call smokism.

does any of that do anything than muddy the waters for you?
fini is offline