steve-in-kville

I've been researching this term and if I understand correctly, its basically being able to take life's problems without panicking and possibly relapsing.

How close am I?

Wholesome

To me it would be deeper than that, more along the terms of sober living where you've moved on from the addiction and grown comfortable with your new life.

doggonecarl

I've not heard of the term before, but your understanding of the term is a worthwhile goal.

steve-in-kville

I've only heard the term for the first time earlier this week. Somewhere here on SR.

Centered3

Emotional sobriety as far as I understand means it's not just about "not drinking." If we don't pick up, but still act like a selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and fearful immature person, then we are not emotionally sober.

It's about growing up and being spiritually, emotionally, and mentally healthy.

It's about responding to life, being kind, loving, patient, and tolerant, staying in our own lane, not judging or complaining that someone isn't acting the way we want, staying out of drama, being grateful instead of resentful, living in the present moment, and doing the next right thing.

It's about just going with the flow of life without letting stuff or people effect our thinking or our actions/reactions.

Emotional sobriety means we might feel angry, but we don't stay angry or react in anger. We handle our emotions like a healthy adult.

Emotional sobriety is a wonderful topic. "It's what separates the men from the boys" says a circuit speaker I admire.

Wholesome

I think you really nailed it there Centered.

Doug39

Good stuff.

paulokes

My capacity for loving, living, feeling empathy, being afraid and being hurt without retaliating or withdrawing into my shell are all immensely greater than they used to be. Drunk, I could not deal with a Goddamn thing.

Emotional Sobriety is what makes this whole recovery thing worthwhile for me. I struggle to remember how much worse I felt when drinking...it's a little like a story now...but I truly appreciate how much I've grown and learnt to live my life.

P

seahorse661

Tom B Jr has a great talk about this topic on XA speakers

steve-in-kville

Great way to put it!

August252015

"Emotional sobriety" has been my phrase for my recovery for months now. C3 described it pretty well..

I would say that that it means my focus isn't about not drinking - that problem has been removed. Alcohol is a non-issue, because I work to maintain my spiritual fitness - or emotional sobriety. To me, this comes BEFORE physical sobriety because becoming unstable, reactive, disturbed, unable to "deal" with ups and downs effectively....would all lead back to the drink.

Everything I do - prayer and devotional work, meetings, a resource network of sponsor/sober bf/friends/etc, BB study,a well-supervised drug regimen, and so on- supports the life I have now, the promises coming true in my life, and my peace of mind - emotional sobriety.

Peacefulness, ability to "right" myself more quickly and with less extreme reaction, trust in the future and living in steps 1,, 10 and 12 help me maintain such a state. There are many spots in the BB that refer to this new way of life ("things that used to baffle us..." - "we are in much less danger of fear, worry, excitement..." and so on - paraphrase BB 4th ed).

Life in the pink clouds - that's emotional sobriety to me. And it is a daily objective that I meet more often than not, most of the time.

Fusion

For me, emotional sobriety is more akin to emotional maturity. I believe 'Mindfullness' is the current name. When emotions well up (anger, fear, worry, resentments, despair etc.) with emotional maturity we may use our higher brain to assess that habitual, often self-destructive destructive emotion ( thoughts/feelings) and instead of running down that spiral and giving it energy, we stand back as a mature, intelligent person and deal with the emotions with logic and rationality - instead of the immature knee-jerk reactions.

I like what Bill Wilson said here:

"Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious—from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream—be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task."

It's sad that Bill W. didn't live long enough to learn of the distinction between our conscious and unconscious (mis-directed survival drive - Mr. Hyde) and the fact that conscious (self-higher brain) can override and dismiss the thoughts and feelings which are falsehoods, even when they become habitual; together with advancements in brain understanding. He was almost there......

FBL

Learning how to deal with life's ups and downs without resorting to alcohol. For me, it's an ongoing process, but I think (I hope) that I'm getting better with it as time goes on...progress, not perfection.

ScottFromWI

I think a better question is what you think it is Steve. And if you want to know how close, what is your real end-goal? You ask a lot of very open ended questions about various terms or ideas related to sobriety, but at the end of the day what's really most important is what your goals are. The terms we use to describe our quest to be sober are far less important than the actual steps we take or the things that we do.

JeffreyAK

That's about how I look at it, a kind of emotional stability, nothing more complicated than that. Yin needs Yang, and the ups and downs of life are normal cycles that complement each other. Neither the ups nor the downs are justifications to drink, and need not cause panic and anxiety either, because they are just normal cycles.

I find that I'm an absolute rock compared with how I was as a drinker. Drinking in response to emotions tends to reinforce those emotions and make them feel stronger next time, partly because they become triggers for our addictions. So we wind up with all this needless manufactured drama in our lives, that's only there because we manufactured it.

We don't always get to control what happens in life, but we do always get to control how we react to it.

Gottalife

The ability to meet calamity with serenity.

Aellyce

^Scott's post pretty much summarized my own reaction and observations as well. You ask many good questions and bring up interesting topics, but do you follow them up as well in your own world? I'm asking because I know when I do similar things, it's often an avoidance strategy: distracting myself with a zillion things from what I truly need to address and tackle in practical terms. Not suggesting you do the same but what came to my mind first.

paulokes

On a personal note ... I've had 5 or 6 things go on in the last few weeks that have all been huge in their own way. Things about my relationship with my parents, my feelings and perspective about myself growing up, my relationships with women, things from the past that I regret, my perceived ability to form friendships open up and trust people...

Really, I would not know where to start...each of these things on their own would have been huge and challenging on their own in early sobriety. As it happens they all came at once at this point in my life, some were painful, some were bittersweet, some were amazing...here I am still sober, no temptation to drink, a smile on my face and feeling like the kind of person I could actually get to like.

I cannot define what Emotional Sobriety means for you or anyone else...it would just be a by-rote, textbook thing. I can however describe what it means and how it feels for me

P

Centered3

Emotional sobriety means:

-I don't give the finger to the driver in that little sports car who just cut me off missing hitting my car by inches, only to then slam on their brakes. And I don't curse at them from my car either, as loud as I can, because they can't hear me. I let it go. Naturally, without thinking. It's my new reaction to life. New design for living. I let everything go. Sometimes I even laugh, which is pretty amazing.

-life is no longer "me, me, me, me, me"

- just because I'm having what my mind tells me is a crappy day, that does not justifies my spewing my crappy mood onto everyone who comes into my path.

-not taking how people treated or treat me personally anymore.

-letting God/my higher power guide me in my thinking and actions because when my mind guides me, I screw up big time.

-I don't walk around thinking I'm so great because I made amends, and get pissed if someone doesn't want to reestablish a relationship because "look how healthy I am now".

-I don't say "I'm not drinking (etc), what more do you want from me?!?!"

-I not only see how I was playing God, but now I quit playing God.

-self-awareness of and caring about how my words and actions affect others. It means seeing and owning up to how I used to be.

-I don't say or think things like "If you had my childhood, you'd drink too!" Emotional sobriety has no room for victim mentality. Only victor mentality.

-I see that bottles were just a symbol of my underlying alcoholism, and I understand clearly what that means now.

-I don't collect chips and think I'm so wonderful for not drinking x amount of time, and making so many meetings in a week. It means I now get that I take a chip to give the newcomer HOPE.

-There's a lot of humility that goes along with emotional sobriety. I never had that before.

Jeez how did anyone stand to be around me before I recovered!! lol

Great thread. Hope it was ok that I posted twice but I had some more stuff that I realized about my journey.

paulokes

Rumour has it that I'm a little...ahem...sensitive.

The fact that I've just said that, and I'm smiling, is Emotional Sobriety for me

P