Ann

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Getting It All Out

Let yourself have a good gripe session.
From: " Woman, Sex, and Addiction"
-- Charlotte Davis Kasl, Ph.D.

Get it out. Go ahead. Get it all out. Once we begin recovery, we may feel like it's not okay to gripe and complain. We may tell ourselves that if we were really working a good program, we wouldn't need to complain.

What does that mean? We won't have feelings? We won't feel overwhelmed? We won't need to blow off steam or work through some not so pleasant, not so perfect, and not so pretty parts of life?

We can let ourselves get our feelings out, take risks, and be vulnerable with others. We don't have to be all put together, all the time. That sounds more like codependency than recovery.

Getting it all out doesn't mean we need to be victims. It doesn't mean we need to revel in our misery, finding status in our martyrdom. It doesn't mean we won't go on to set boundaries. It doesn't mean we won't take care of ourselves.

Sometimes, getting it all out is an essential part of taking care of ourselves. We reach a point of surrender so we can move forward.

Self-disclosure does not mean only quietly reporting our feelings. It means we occasionally take the risk to share our human side-the side with fears, sadness, hurt, rage, unreasonable anger, weariness, or lack of faith.

We can let our humanity show. In the process, we give others permission to be human too. "Together" people have their not so together moments. Sometimes, falling apart - getting it all out - is how we get put back together.

Today, I will let it all out if I need a release.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.

Ann

My sponsor used to tell me that to work a good program we must be willing to "expose" ourselves, sharing the good with the bad and just being honest about where we were. She said that we no longer needed to feel shame or "less than" just because we struggled.

When I was willing to be vulnerable with my sponsor or my group, it also meant that I trusted them with my very soul. I still do.

Hugs

tropikgal2

I write letters I will never send. I keep them in a secret place so that one day I may open them and see how far I came.

cookconfay

Good idea!

hope213

i think it is good to get it out.we have to walk through all of our emotions in order to get pass them & to move on.it doesn't mean we are not growing ,it means we are.

Nitelite

Ann, this was just what I needed to hear today. I burst -- and i think that's the right description -- into rage at my ex the other day. I thought I was long past that; we've been apart for many years now, but then i discovered he was using coke ~ our son is an opiate addict ~ and all of those years of abuse he cheerfully inflicted came roaring back at me.

Then I worried because exploding seemed so non-al-anon to me. We serenity our way right on thru, right?
But for me, the time was right to let it explode. It's either that or attack helpless pillows with a baseball bat. I felt a little guilty at a meeting this morning expressing it. Tho as I think about it, people did come up to me later.

Then I read this post, and feel better yet. Thanks ~

CatsPajamas

Thanks Ann, sometimes I need a reminder that I don't have to be "together" all the time. There are times that I feel like I am a failure at recovery - those times when I lose my cool or say the wrong thing, or burst into tears because I let too many things pile up without dealing with them as they come along.

Progress, not perfection... Thanks for the reminder.

~Cats

PS - in 17 days I am taking an All about ME VACATION !!!!! Wanna come?

notsleepingwell

Ann

As usual, just what I needed.


Cat...
I wanna come on vacation!!! P.S. You can come up and swim in my new pool