ScottFromWI

This is fantastic news Obladi. I have had a lot of things happening in my life and have little time to spend here on SR, but it's really good to hear that you are 90+ days sober upon my return.

If I could give any advice based on what I remember from those days, it would be not to overthink it all. Sober is good...keep it going and good things will happen ;-)

Obladi

Thanks, Scott!
Welcome back - I was wondering about you...

Not sure I will ever be able to turn off the thinking, but if I find a way to do so I'll be the first to publish the solution.
I'd say the biggest lesson I've learned is that my abstinence doesn't need to "look like" anyone else's - with the notable exception of not drinking.

Fusion

Nope, that’s what this century’s understanding of the brain tells us. In the same way we as humans learn how to ride a bicycle, play the piano, drive a car; we humans learn that drinking does “x” (whatever x is to the individual, remove feelings, heighten feelings etc.) it can’t be unlearnt.

I recall learning to drive a car, it was clunky, difficult, the neural pathways were laid down, and it became a smooth, habituated, without any pre-thought. The problem with addiction habituation is, whether it be alcohol or food, it involves the survival drive reward centre, that generates massive amounts of chemicals that drive a human towards that habit. And for me, the answer is, ignore it mAnd every time I do, I build a new habituated highway. .thiugh I do try to ignite the reward paths through excercising and caring for others (oops, I do realise the latter can be an addiction in itself!)

Fusion

MesaMan. Your post made me reminisce, back to the age of 13, when I was taught by an amazing English Literature teacher, who went extra-curricular and dispensed what she called ‘pearls of wisdom’. Sounds like MesaMate’s sage advice to her students. Sadly, my teacher died and was replaced by an average EL teacher, no more self-development internal self-integrity advice, pearls of wisdom.

Every young girl should benefit from a MesaMate, please thank her from me too, for her contribution to young girls in their formative years.

ScottFromWI

Yes, I have a new job that requires a LOT of travel and I've also decided to go back to school to get an advanced degree, so I've been absent a lot from here.

As far as "turning off the thinking", I don't think we really ever can - but we can definitely get out of the way. I deal with Anxiety and have for a long time, drinking was my attempted escape, but of course it made it even worse eventually. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned to you before, but if not part of my "cure" for those racing thoughts was to get some professional help. I've done therapy, tried a few meds, exercise, diet etc etc etc.

One of my favorite analogies/stories that I learned over that time is the "river of thoughts'. Basically - imagine yourself standing on the bank of a river - and the water flowing by is all the thoughts swirling in your head. Sometimes the river is at flood stage and almost overflowing the banks, other times it's somewhat calm. But even then, there is always a constant flow of water. Our brains are the same - you can't stop the thoughts from happening, but you can choose how involved you get. Just like the real river, you can stand on the banks and just watch it all go by if you want - or you can wade in a little and get your feet wet. But if you go in too deep you may struggle to stay above water, or even drown. You can do the same things with the thoughts....let them happen, acknowledge them...but you don't need to react to every one. In fact you don't need to react to any of them if you don't want to.

Fusion

Yes, I use the river thought analogy, can’t remember where I picked it up. My variant is, boats sail down the river, I put names on them as they float on past, worry, anxiety, shame, resentment, you get the picture. If I think about those thought labelled boats, I step onto them, I’m swept downstream by it. So I must keep my feet firmly planted on the riverbank and watch and name those though labelled laden boats, as they float by and onto the horizon. I do that in meditation, too.

Obladi

Yep, Scott, I remember.

I do see a therapist and take prescribed meds for anxiety and depression. This helps, however I think the anxiety is really quite heightened now that I'm not drinking. I know it will take time for things to balance out, but man it can be uncomfortable.

I've never done well with visualization exercises, but I get what you're saying. Not sure I'll ever be able to stand beside the river; perhaps with practice at meditation that might come. To follow on with the metaphor, I'd say I've always been in the river, but I've managed to wade to the shallow water and and not let it bother me that my feet are wet.

Dropsie

Great posts here, and please do thank Mesamate from me too.

Question for Sass and the moms - my 15 year old has a healthy body, but does not have much room to spare before she becomes overweight. And the way she is shaped she will go from Beyonce to chubby. I have been chubby my whole life and don't wish that for her. What to do?

I have focused on habits around eating healthy, rather than her weight. Thoughts? Tips?

To the anxiety, racing thoughts challenge, I cannot say often enough how much meditation and a good guru has helped me.

Great to hear you Cow -- you sound good girl. Catch up when/if ....

AlericB

​​​​​That's a good variant. Labelling the thought (as anger, fear, desire etc.) instead of getting caught up in thought helps us to disentangle ourselves from them and return to just being aware of them.

And even if you do get swept downstream by them, and you inevitably will be, just labelling them again will put you right back on the riverbank! It just achieves that separation we need to see that we are not our thoughts, e.g. the thought "I want a drink" is really just that, a passing thought. Believing that it is true is a distraction from what you really want.

ScottFromWI

I am willing to bet that you can indeed find that peace. Meditation can definitely help, even if it's just 5 minutes at a time on your lunch break. I found that it took literally a couple of years after quitting to really start settling down on a regular basis - AKA where I really don't even think about it anymore. But for a long time I had panic attacks out of the blue for no reason - in the line at the grocery store, sitting at stoplights, or just sitting at my desk completely out of the blue.

I don't think there's a magic bullet though - I desperately wanted my first counselor to give me some magic technique or exercise that would "cure" my anxiety. I even tried a couple of meds with varying results, but for me they were really only treating the symptoms and not the real source of the problem.

One thing that really helped me early on was to drastically cut back on my caffeine and sugar intake. For some reason I became really hyper-sensitive to caffeine after I quit, even a single cup of regular coffee would cause jitters and very strong anxiety. And I LOVE coffee, so it was really hard....drank nasty decaf or half caff but it worked. And over time I have kind of leveled off so I can drink regular coffee again, just not gallons of it!

Fusion

Yes indeed AlericB, “I” truly want sobriety, any thought that implies otherwise, is to use the Neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz’s words, a “Defective. Rain Message”, otherwords the AV, aka ‘a thought’. It puts this into perspective when the average person has between 60,000 and 70,000 autonomous thoughts float their mind every day.

AlericB

I agree Tatsy. I believe that all your reasoned thoughts and choices that have built up your preference for sobriety is what you really want and any fleeting thoughts to the contrary are mere "rain messages" - just weather.

Obladi

Wait up. I notice we are using the terms "thinking" and "feeling" interchangeably. I think what I meant was that I have trouble standing at the riverside of feelings and just watching them go by. Thoughts are a different thing altogether.

Let me think on that some.

Seriously.

Aellyce

I love that river metaphor, never heard it before. Very relatable for me as well. If we are separating thoughts and feelings, for me the challenge is definitely detaching from my thoughts - not getting too involved in and affected by feelings is pretty easy for me, almost kinda automatic and at times problematic... I actually need to force myself to consider my own feelings occasionally as they can carry important information. I think the overthinking can be sort of a compensatory mechanism, a form of automatic distraction. My goal these days is a better, healthier balance without dissociation and using my thought processes as a defense. I do suffer with anxiety (I don't think it has any mysterious cause other than physiology) but, for me, it was very bad only while I was drinking heavily. Early sobriety brought more an increase in OCD-type things and that was also challenging because I would get stuck in it. It's leveled out reasonably and I also find it way easier not to go down the rabbit hole with every interesting-looking thought or idea.

To not get carried away and drawn in the current of feelings, I think one thing that can really help is to look at the larger picture. Ask what's really going on, is it worth the energy to get involved? Feelings change all the time and sometimes what generates them is not much more than internal physiological fluctuations - then we run with the feeling and project it onto some external situation, perceiving it as a threat or something. This is pretty much how anxiety works. So just viewing but mostly ignoring the feelings can be a good thing IMO, if not excessive and overly avoidant... because if we retreat into denial and not deal with things that exacerbate worries, it will usually just make it worse.

I posted here on SR a few times that, for me, the best remedies for these mental excesses are a relatively healthy and balanced lifestyle with good nutrition (does not mean I eat clean at all times), better sleep and rest habits, exercise, not isolating myself socially etc. Definitely cutting back on caffeine. Staying away from irritating, unstable, controlling people and drama as much as reasonable (although that had never really been a significant issue). I did explore meditation a lot in the past but, for me, it was more interesting than truly helpful. Similar for therapy - for me it mostly made things worse as it encouraged even more introspection and thinking, I am already way too prone to those by default, it ended up being yet another distraction. Just use whatever works for everyone.

There is also something to be said about having sufficient basic security in our lives. Too much uncertainty definitely generates obsessive negative thoughts and feelings and I was really not a security-seeker in my youth, there were many aspects of stability that I just did not care to establish. Now I do (still not too much) and it definitely has a mentally calming effect. Normal aging is a factor, too, I believe.

Very glad to hear that things are going well, O - congratulations!

entropy1964

Hey Drops

I know your question wasn't directed at me but I have some experience with that anxiety over 'will she go through what I have and be 'chubby' or will she not'. And its tough. I mean, my daughter went through years of covering herself up, even tho she was by no means 'fat', just not skinny. I call them 'the brown sweat shirt years'. I also encouraged good healthy eating and some movement (which still is not a thing for her) and just hoped she would see that she was simply consuming too many calories. I think the most powerful part was leading by example and making sure I was 'showing' her how to do it, even if she didn't initially seem to follow my lead. Well by 16 she had lost 20 lbs. By 17 30 and downright thin. And she hasn't moved from that. She does eat less, she is probably more focused on it than I'd like. But for those of us that simply can't eat whatever we want (and btw her metabolism is not anywhere near as messed up slow as mine) there must be a certain amount of focus because we live in a food obsessed, fat society.

I was put on diets starting at about 8 and I think it was an awful thing to do. The food deprivation, when I think my growing body actually needed it, was really bad. And I too eventually found my footing and am able to stay fairly healthy. Not thin, like my sleek daughter, but at least healthy.

Just keep healthy food around. Encourage home prepped foods and stay away from drinking calories, which kids tend to do. And set that example. Beyond that, focus on the internal LOC....that how we feel and except ourselves internally, will impact the external results.

Well that's my experience. But it is hard. Just not wanting them to go through what we have.

Stayingsassy

Oh my gosh, this is true for me. I kinda thought sobriety would take away some of this but no. I just deal with it sober instead.

I hopped on that resentment boat sometime yesterday and had a damn party on that boat, and I am STILL trying to swim to shore.

I have wondered in the last 24 hours if I had just not gotten on the boat in the first place, would that be better for me.

Fortunately I’m better at not lashing out than when I drank but I still feel things all the way to 10/10 even when I would rather not.

Obladi

Hey Drops,

What does your daughter think? Is she concerned about her weight? If you don't know, you could ask about her thoughts on body-shaming. How are the kids at school about remarking on other people's looks? What does she think about advertising, etc? It's a good conversation topic...

If she doesn't know your experiences and feelings, she'd probably benefit from hearing your thoughts too.

I agree that setting a good example is the best approach. Probably like you, I tried hard never to remark on my girls' size because I know how rough it was to hear any kind of commentary from other people about my own chubbiness. My go-to remark whenever any of them disses themselves is "you're beautiful, inside and out."

Obladi

Here's what I think.

Up until fairly recently, I've had a hard time identifying my feelings. Best I can figure it, I learned early on that feelings are embarrassing or shameful. Happy, sad, frightened, hurt... whatever it was, I was either wrong or just being foolish. So I think I taught myself to ignore my feelings - to the point that I honestly didn't know what they were much of the time. I've written about this before; ask me how I felt about something and I would respond with a thought, definition or theory.

It seems that much of the excessive thinking of which I've been often accused was maybe my attempt to explain how I was feeling and how I got there. I know now that it's much more simple to say "I feel like I'm about to crawl right out of my skin" than it is to explain that feeling. And also, I know now that there is no need for me to justify how I feel - it's ok to just feel whatever it is.

Now that I'm cultivating the skill of identifying my feelings, I can certainly allow them to drift along on the river. They may get caught in the branches from time to time, but I don't need to let that concern me too much. This makes identifying and separating from thoughts that much easier. Rather than noticing a distressing thought, then trying to follow the trail to the originating feeling, I can instead just think, "Huhn. That's interesting," then follow that up with curiosity. Or not.

AlericB

That's interesting Obladi. I tend to do reverse, to try to follow the trail from a feeling to a thought. For example, if I have a desire to drink I find it interesting to think where that desire come from. The answer that makes the most sense to me is from cognitive psychology that feelings are an evaluation/interpretation of our experience.

​​So we choose our emotions rather than that they just happen to us. So I see a desire for a drink as coming from a belief that it will help me relax etc. When I used to drink heavily I believed that this was true but I don't now because I see this as just a cultural belief about the power and effects of alcohol (from films etc of people pouring a drink after a stressful day at work) that isn't actually true. An example I read about that illustrates this is suppose you were out, had a few drinks and was feeling relaxed. Even though over the limit you drive home but you're then stopped by the police. Your relaxed state will immediately be replaced by intense anxiety. This shows that your relaxed state wasn't caused by the alcohol but from other causes such as your expectations of alcohol or your intention to relax when you took a drink. If it had been caused by the alcohol it would still exist even when confronted by the police. So, because my view and thoughts about alcohol, especially about it's supposed magical property of being able to relax you, has changed, so has my feelings and desire for it changed. You can't want what you know won't actually help.

Obladi

"So we choose our emotions rather than that they just happen to us."

Wow! Nothing has been further from the truth for me - or at least that's how it's always (?) felt.

However.

Recent ruminations have led me to question a seemingly long-standing notion that my perspective is fixed and therefore (for instance) things that drive me batty will always do so. Because that perspective is just "how I am." So if I can choose my perspective, does that sort of mean I can choose my feelings?

Hm. hm. hm.