FreeOwl

anyone have any experience with traumatic or painful crap suddenly appearing in sobriety?

Month 10 is getting pretty intense.....

Chiffon

I find that writing them down, gets them to leave my head, as means I can always read them if I want to. Stops them spinning round and round.

soberclover

My drinking covered up a lot of bad memories and a lot of pain. When I reached the stage in my sobriety that became more than just not drinking.....it was the stage of life getting real. There was no more alcohol to make things. I had to deal with the memories and the pain. I needed to participate in counseling....a LOT of counseling. Throughout the process, I also needed to learn how to take care of myself physically and emotionally when I was a trainwreck. Eventually I learned how to do this. I believe we all drank for a reason. I also believe we get sober for a reason. My reason is because I didn't want to die. I suggest doing whatever you need to do to learn to live through and with your past. It sucks on some days but for me it is the only way to maintain my sobriety.

biminiblue

I'm pretty good at keeping them repressed. I've delved into them at length in the past and see no benefit to rehashing them yet again. I'll talk briefly about them if I feel I can relate to someone else's pain, but to go there on purpose or to allow them more than a passing thought? Not so much. I do agree that many of us drink to forget and that coming to terms with the past is important.

I've learned that the key to living with them is the Serenity Prayer, living one day at a time, and forgiving myself and others.

Anna

Yes, I did have things that hit me out of the blue.

And, I developed a completely different perspective on some things.

Recovery is a process and I think it's always changing.

Fly N Buy

Good and bad. As my brain begins the long journey back to " normalcy" memories are coming back.

Today I was in office supply store buying a notebook. As I looked around vivid remberances of shopping for school supplied back in late 60's returned clear as a bell. I cannot define it well - but a smell of newness - hope emerged. Like when we were young and looking forward to something in the near future.

Soberwolf

This

FreeOwl

thanks all... just been having some fragments here and there. Some are images... some just sort of 'awareness' events, I suppose. Becoming aware of a memory. A flash of a picture of my life. Some postive, some not.

had a pretty powerful experience of that in a session with my therapist today.... the flash of an image that then triggered a bigger awareness of something that happened as a child that is pretty raw and probably has been at the core of some long-held emotional issues. Perhaps even one of the very first bricks of my addiction foundations....

I wondered how frequently this happens in sobriety. If it's a 'normal' part of the process. Normal or not, it is powerful and tiring and difficult and a little painful. But, I feel like it's probably growth.

GracieLou

Yes. In fact I remembered my first drunk. I am not sure where or why it was hiding but it came at me like a freight train one day. I remembered everything in vivid detail.

The first drunk memory was at three months sober, I needed it right then. I needed to see that I drank like an alcoholic from the start.

I had another recently. If I would have remembered it six months ago, it would not have been good. Like Anna said, I was able to look at it differently so in turn I dealt with it differently.

I think they come when we are ready to deal with them.

More will be revealed.

Verte

Yes. I'm at around 7+ months and like Anna wrote, my perspective has changed. Without alcohol to halt the thought process I feel like this is one step towards being master of my own castle. Still at my own pace and readiness. Time to deflate the balloons crowding my air space - is how I see it. The majority of the damn balloons were never mine to begin with. Somehow along the way I just added them to my bunch.

Fly N Buy

A final thought from me FreeOwl (ya get what ya pay for, lol) - I have had people whose professional opinions I respect explain some things about memories.

As we become aware of things from our past, take them with a grain of salt. While we are surely convinced what we now recall to be the absolute truth / recollections may in fact be tainted by time and simply our own brains.

Kind of like 5 witnesses describing what the crook looked like when he committed the robbery, testimony varies.

So, with the bad - perhaps consider that absolute truth maybe not really be perhaps totally accurate and melded into our current perspective of life....

peace Free
Fly

Finnie

I'm with you. 10 months sober and I'm worse now mentally than when I was drinking.

Dee74

The first years was rough for me I had 40 years of stuff long stuffed away in the too hard basket. I had no choice but to deal with that piece by piece if I wanted to be sober and happy.

It does, and will get better FO...you too Finnie

D

NHTransplant

I'm a month into my sobriety and finding that the memories to be sudden, intense, and leaving a lot of emotions in their wake. I think I put off truly processing them while I was drinking so now I have a backlog. My hope is that a few years on I'll have processed through the queue and I won't have to worry about these landmines messing with my day.

Nowsthetime

I'm dealing with that right now also. You are not alone. I'm at 7.5 months and on the outside no one knows (other than my SR friends) what I'm going through. Since my daughter was born and then soon after an event similar to something that happened to me made national news, some things have bubbled up. Part of getting sober was me getting these things off my chest... I told my husband of 10 years and I am dealing with it at the moment. Right now I just feel like I have to truck and stomp through these times and better ones will come. The pendulum will swing again. I am SOOO close to being out of early sobriety, just another couple months. I just want to stabilize

FreeOwl

thank you all for sharing.

I am focusing on acceptance and faith. Acceptance that all the turbulence of my emotions right now is what it is. Faith that it is temporary and part of a growth process. This too shall pass.

Some of it is harder than others. I am bouncing from anxiety to depression to elation to grief. I am having flashes of memory that then engender associated emotions. I am carrying chronic worry about work. I am facing my age. I am afraid of a sudden loss of libido and huge anxiety problems in my intimate relationship. I am churning over and over "what's going ON". I'm afraid of it all lasting forever.....

So I just have to observe all of that, focus on healing and assuring myself, focus on healthy living, focus on allowing it to be what it is, sharing it, caring for myself.... and accepting and having faith.

These are all things that I cannot simply "fix". These are all things that are entirely new to really confront and deal with and not medicate or numb away. So, I am going to just focus on faith, on patience, on acceptance and whatever simply positive actions I can take each day with the knowledge that nothing ever stays the same.

I appreciate everyone sharing. It helps.