Residual Guilt?
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Texas
Posts: 91
Residual Guilt?
I haven't drank in almost 5 months. Every once in awhile I get this tremendous feeling of guilt/shame. I don't even know why. I used to walk around feeling this everyday when I was drinking. Now I'm not drinking, I don't have anything to be guilty or ashamed about.... but I occassionally still get these feelings. I feel like there's something I forgot about that I did wrong... but I can't come up with anything.
Does this happen to anyone else?
Does this happen to anyone else?
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 3,095
Originally Posted by LBW 
Now I'm not drinking, I don't have anything to be guilty or ashamed about....
I set all those things down on paper as part of a 4th Step inventory going through AA's program of recovery. Where I had done harm, I repaired the damage as best I could. I still do that today when I harm someone else or step on their toes.
Today, I am free from my past. I can go anywhere and meet anybody and look them in the eye and not be ashamed.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 107
Originally Posted by keepcominback
I think our disease wants us to feel badly sometimes, so we return to drinking. It is using the only thing it has to get us, to make us return to feelings of low self-worth, or impending doom, or guilt about past, etc.
Clever, isn't it?...that disease of ours.
The mind has stored so many things, also, so maybe it is just recalling at times, so don't worry.
A friend of mine says, we are going to have feelings. They will pass. It is normal she said in early sobriety.
My other friend says when these thoughts or feelings come up think: "knock, knock, alcoholism at you door!"...
I can relate with you, and understand what you are sharing. I wish all thoughts were always good, and all feelings good, and that we can be happy, joyous and free, with the negative gone for good.
I just thought of a place in the big book of AA that I will share:
Bill's Story:
For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead.
Certain trials and low spots. We will have them.
Clever, isn't it?...that disease of ours.
The mind has stored so many things, also, so maybe it is just recalling at times, so don't worry.
A friend of mine says, we are going to have feelings. They will pass. It is normal she said in early sobriety.
My other friend says when these thoughts or feelings come up think: "knock, knock, alcoholism at you door!"...
I can relate with you, and understand what you are sharing. I wish all thoughts were always good, and all feelings good, and that we can be happy, joyous and free, with the negative gone for good.
I just thought of a place in the big book of AA that I will share:
Bill's Story:
For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead.
Certain trials and low spots. We will have them.
I can't sleep at night and just go nuts with guilt, I always come around in the morning and just keep on, keepin on...
I love that line "knock,knock, alcoholisum at the door..." too true, just gotta call it out and see it for what it really is...
I find thinking about all the bad things I am NOT doing in sobriety now...and "count your blessings" helps me, to me its not just a line of words or a 'saying'...it's an action.
It's hard , but thats life for me...drinking is missing life, all life takes time to grow.
All the best.
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