I have found strength to deal with my past, but it was not exactly directly because I stopped drinking. I knew my drinking was causing destruction and chaos and confusion in my life.. but there have been many layers in my recovery and getting off alcohol was just the first. So I had to go through the withdrawal and I then I had to deal with all the emotions I'd been numbing with alcohol? It was excruciating but I am SO GLAD I FINALLY DID IT! AND I SURVIVED!
That was the biggest and scariest step, but absolutely had to be the first step.. nothing was ever going to get better til I got sober. So then I did manage to learn why I had the feelings I had, and how to put them in proper perspective.. For me it was from coming here and reading certain books that helped for my personal situation... For others, it comes from AA or counseling... You acquire more power and more perspective... Eventually things will start falling in to place... I didn't start feeling sober til two months after I stopped drinking... Why do I say that? My thinking had not caught up yet, it was still addictive thinking.
I feel like I have been rambling and not cohesively... the thread title made me think of a line I read in Codependent No More just a few hours ago: She says much of our anxiety and fearfulness stems from constantly telling ourselves we're just not up to facing our world and all its situations. Nathanial Branden calls this "a nameless sense of being unfit for reality"
That struck a major chord for me... I'm not different from anyone else, what ever made me believe I was somehow uniquely unfit for this life, my life. It would seem to me I'm the one most qualified and capable to live it.
We need to stop telling ourselves, first of all, that we are different for doing and feeling the same things everyone else does and feels.