DesertEyes

Hello Hammer, and pleased to "meet" you

Been there, done that. Was married to a pill-head, now divorced. Then hooked up with a food addict, now split up. I understand about "cakes" and how long it takes.

My experience is that in real life it has nothing to do with cakes and baking. Recovery doesn't work like that.

Recovery works a little bit every day. Some days they make big improvements, some days they slide back, but the overall trend is _forward_.

Which is why journaling is recommended. I use SR as my journal. The idea is that when I write down what I am going through, I can go back and see what improvements have ocurred over time. When it comes to people and recovery I find that past performance is an excellent indicator of future performance.

Here's what my sponsor had me do, worked for me, adapt to your needs. Over the last Seven Months, how much progress has been made? Put a number on it. When she went _in_ to rehab your life was what? Zero percent? If she were a perfect woman giver her 100%. What would you settle for in a _normal_ human being? I'd be very happy with 80%.

Over the last seven months has your life become _half_ normal? That would be an improvement of 50%.

What I did was put a "trend" on it. I wanted to see an average of 10% improvement every month. That means we would have 3 good days out of 30 the first month, 6 the second month, and so on.

I realized we were _not_ improving. At all. We were stuck in the same old routine and each month was the same as the previous. The numbers just helped me look back over time and see the big picture, instead of getting hung up on the immediate present, a mechanism to shake me out of my "tunnel vision".

Mike