Sitting with feelings
 

It really is interesting how much I used to cover up my feelings with alcohol, but I didn't even realize it. I was very upset about something this morning and I instinctively got up to get some wine. At only 36 days sober, this instinct is still there 100%. Clearly, those neural pathways haven't rusted over yet. Of course, I didn't have any wine and wouldn't have drank it anyway, but I didn't realize that this was something I had been doing while drinking. I had thought I was drinking just because I WANTED to, not because I was trying not to have to FEEL. So, today I instead did what the Recovery books say, I exercised and made myself some tea and read a bit... Sadly, none of these things cover up your feelings in the same way. Obviously, this is good, you're forced to work through these feelings. It's disappointing though (to my alcoholic mind) that I'll never have that escape again, even though I'm just now realizing it was an amazing escape. I'm kind of mourning it. Anyway. I wonder if non-alcoholics ever use it to escape, or the fact someone does is a sign of alcoholism?

I find, post drinking years, that sitting with feelings is hard for me as well.
How I cope now: Sometimes I meditate. Sometimes I go for a walk. Sometimes I go find a kitty to pet.
If I wake them up to pet them, though, well, you know.
Treats may be involved.
Kitty bribery.
I used to vault over furniture to get to the wine when something upset me.
I’m retired now, but the last few years of my job weren’t real fun, so I was upset a lot.
I also drank a lot.
Coincidence? Um, no.
Peace.

Hey
I would drink my feelings away too, stress anxiety happiness sadness anything! The bad feelings would disappear initially at the first few drinks then when I hit black out peak they would return and I'd sit and cry for hours on end so essentially I wasnt using it to feel better I was using it to forget! (partner would tell me the next day about the crying) to me now I feel that was defeating the purpose as I was still sad I just didn't know it.

Right now when I feel stress I take long walks, read books and take a bath, post here or sleep on it!
I hope you feel better soon sohard and the good thing is you recognise it now. Keep going

You know what non alcoholics do with their feelings?



They experience them.

I think there are a lot of ways to "escape" feelings for a while - exercise, a nice meal, a beautiful sunset or landscape, a fun game played with someone, the list is really long.

Drinking is really not an escape either - your addiction would of course love for you to think that it was, but in reality alcohol is a depressant and for the most part made everything worse for us.

Regarding your last question, I think if anyone would overuse/abuse any "escape" that it would be considered a type of addiction. And you can literally be addicted to anything.

Lastly, I think you need to remember that while 36 days sober is fantastic, it's very, very early in your journey. Things will definitely improve over time, and it would be unreasonable to expect everything to just be perfect after a few weeks - especially when we abused our minds and bodies for so long.

Yes to all of it.

I think I am turning a corner though as I sometimes wonder, feelings aint so bad really.

Thats new.

Shame is bad. I recently realised how much I cause my own shame as a way of creating negative energy. Seeing that allowed me to step away a lot of the time.

Interesting.

No way could I have done this work drunk.

Quick question: Does anyone get to the point where they simply stop thinking about alcohol.? I'm just sick to death of thinking about it. I'm not talking about cravings, I'm talking about the general subject of alcohol. I go on SR and read about it because I think it prevents me from drinking, but I'm also bored out of my skull with the topic. I want to be a normal non-drinker, but I'd also like to be normal not thinking about the damn topic all the time. Just wondering.

I’ve felt like that too....start a project or read a novel. Your doing great!

rather than just sitting with, or trying to distract myself from feelings, I try to work through them. there is a useful Cognitive tool that you may find helpful:

SMART Recovery® - ABC's A Crash Course

ultimately, if I want to stop thinking about drinking, I need to change my thinking & I find this is a good way of helping me do that.

Thank you!

I’m only just over one year and four months sober, after twenty years drinking every single day, the last five of which, sadly, started by drinking in the morning.

Happily, after stopping drinking, the ONLY time (almost, I did have a sneaky AV thought at the pub, post choir singing on Christmas Eve, then before that last summer, whilst sailing, oh and the inbetween one, when celebrating ) but they’re just habituated neural pathway loops!

Sorry, lost my track...but the only time ‘I’ think about drinking, is when I read and post on SR, and I hope that others, like me, and other SRers can put the AV forvever, in the rear- view mirror.

That’s been my experience, too. In the early months I even needed to back off of SR every so often, because it started to trigger me, but now I use it as my ongoing lifelife and reminder. When I’m off SR, I really don’t think about alcohol at all, with rare exceptions, like before major holidays, etc.

I spent a good deal of time in my early to mid-20s in therapy. My therapist used to joke when I'd bring up an emotion, saying "Oh, wow, a feeling." That's what sitting ON your feelings is like, rather than sitting WITH them.

I was an on-again-off-again addict starting in my teen years, starting mostly with weed, progressing to alcohol and various psychedelics in college. Most of my 20s were either not drinking or smoking or tripping, or very occasional drinking. I'd open a bottle of red wine, have a glass, and more often than not it would go bad before I could finish it. In my early 30s I got my MBA and binge drank quite heavily. Most of the remainder of my 30s were spent in "normal" drinking, but addictive exercise, sex and again sitting on my feelings. From my 39th birthday on drinking and drugging were a constant, except for a few interludes that never lasted. The feelings became too much to bear at that point, and so I numbed them.

I believe that I never really processed a lot of these feelings starting in adolescence, and that a lot of teen-angst and anger emerged when I got sober. At that point I was ready, willing and able to sit with them, and have started to experience and then get past these old feelings that go back to early childhood, both through cognitive and narrative psychodynamic therapy.

It's not that drugs and alcohol aren't effective at dealing with the anxiety and depression that go along with unprocessed feelings. It's that they work too well, but the "treatment" is very short term and the symptoms emerge with a vengeance when the immediate intoxication wears off. Also when you become abstinent, you're left with the feelings and no way to escape them without going back to your drug(s) of choice, which has become a lifelong habit by this point. It's a pretty miserable place to be. I think that 12 Step programs can make these feelings and anxiety bearable, and in some cases give people the space to process them. Therapy is also extremely useful. This is called sobriety as opposed to mere abstinence. It also involves being responsible for your feelings instead of merely numbing them.

This is why I believe that a sobriety plan and some sort of processing is crucial to sobriety and feeling good at least most of the time, rather than being scared, anxious and depressed, or going through the even more hellish roller coaster of numbing intoxication followed by extreme psychological symptoms....rinse and repeat.

Some depression and anxiety is indeed biological, particularly bipolar depression, which probably requires lifelong mood stabilizing medication at some level. I think that antidepressant and anxiety medical intervention allows many to be at a place where processing feelings is bearable, and may not be needed in the long term.

One thing I've learned since I got some sober time behind me is that feelings come and go, they don't last forever. Another thing I have noticed since being sober is that positive feelings are better experienced when sober. Yeah alcohol will help to dull your negative feelings for awhile, but they dull your positive feelings as well. And once you stay sober for awhile you may find that being able to experience all of your feelings fully, both positive and negative, brings a healthy balance to your life.

What I find the biggest help to dealing with anger and resentment is a mini 10th Step. I ask myself "what's my part in this?" and 99% of the time I'm also at fault.
It may be I picked the wrong person, said something sarcastic or a put down.
But typically the anger and resentment lift.

At some point I saw it not in terms of "forced to" as "I get to".

At some point even the alcohol will quit working. It did for me.

Now I get to actually experience life, the bad and the good. The downs and the ups. The feelings of sadness, despair and those of happiness, joy and peace. When I was drinking myself to oblivion I denied myself both the good with the bad, until towards the end I found myself in a very dark, lonely, isolated place where even the alcohol provided no escape from.

You are still very early in this process. You're going to feel like this. Feelings can't hurt you; this too shall pass.