To The Weekender Thread for
10-13 Novemeber 2016 Hi and welcome to the Weekender Thread! This is a place where anyone and everyone can come for support - especially over the weekend - but also right through the coming week as well.
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Fear and Disappointment......
I had no coping strategies for either of them, besides the bottle.
I was a champion future tripper. Every little fear got bigger and bigger magnified and played out to a ghastly end.
That was useful for me as the practising alcoholic, but totally no use to sober me.
I had to retrain myself to look dispassionately at my fear and work at hard at presenting other scenarios to it:
- how do you *know* event X will happen?
- isn't it just as likely event Y will happen and you'll be fine?
- Why not apply strategy Z instead and be satisfied you've done your best to mitigate any disaster?
I had to learn to trust myself, and my capacity to solve problems, again - I had to have faith that no matter what happened to me in my world, I'd be ok.
Disappointments been a harder nut for me to crack. I still get disappointed and it can still knock me sideways for a while.
They say the secret is to have low expectations...I've never been able to do that...
What does work, and I know it's not for everyone, but I find strength in my spiritual faith at times when I'm let down:
"Disappointments are just God’s way of saying: I have got something better. Be patient, live life and have faith"
I reckon you could replace God with 'Life' 'Fate' or the 'Universe' there and still get the same message
So yeah...I have an inner emotional gyroscope/compass now I'm sober - sometimes when life is tough and future looks a little bleaker than I'd like, I take a little solace in knowing that, no matter what, I'll inevitably find my feet again and point back towards emotional north.
I will be ok - we all will
D