Originally Posted by
Saskia 
Amp, so happy to hear you are progressing to starting to enjoy life :-) Toots, a down day doesn't feel like a black pit anymore - and I know it will pass. Yesterday I gave myself a slight shove and went to a choral event of holiday singing. Lovely.
I have been trying to find the balance between overdoing it when I'm tired and a slight shove when I'm feeling lazy. This really resonated with me.
Originally Posted by
Saskia My big thing now is to get myself moving physically. In past years, I worked hard at fitness but every time I was feeling really good about it, I got hit with a new significant health issue, some quite serious. So I associate fitness with getting seriously ill. I know I need to push past that but haven't been successful for any real length of time. Still trying. I'm hoping it will be like getting sober - work at it hard and never give up.
This resonated with me too!! Just when I had been achieving & maintaining strong fitness I was hit with psoriatic arthritis. About six months before I got sober I started getting sidelined by pain that made me unable to exercise in my feet and ankles.
Then I started sorting through my recovery and I couldn't differentiate between toxic thinking, pain and fatigue from undiagnosed autoimmune arthritis, and PAWS.
I've tried various times to "get back in shape" over the course of my recovery, but been sidelined by arthritis each and every time - and also by my type A drive to go harder, faster, and more intense, and drive towards my previous level of fitness, instead of heeding the rheumatologist's advice to stay slow and steady.
Saskia, you must be in my brain today. Either that or we alcoholics aren't all that different from each other.
Any suggestions on a rational approach would be greatly appreciated!!