One Year and Over Club- Part 8
Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 1,474
Itchy...thanks for the clarification. Must be my hard head not reading your lovely prose! I do feel courageous(also **** scared! but that is what courage is all about right, doing it anyway).....and more than super duper lucky to have my weeman at my side too. BTW bamboozled means confuzzled...or confused! 
also......
Its Monday.....gah....the first 5 days of the week are the hardest dont ya think?
also......
Its Monday.....gah....the first 5 days of the week are the hardest dont ya think?
Member
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: NYC
Posts: 1,225
Good morning/evening Overs
I like Itchy's avatar. Maybe I will figure out a way to switch mine with his. I just know he'd love to have two smiling Siamese in his.
Monday. Pooh. But I go away for a few day tomorrow. Hurrah!
I like Itchy's avatar. Maybe I will figure out a way to switch mine with his. I just know he'd love to have two smiling Siamese in his.
Monday. Pooh. But I go away for a few day tomorrow. Hurrah!
Member
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 2,826
Warm welcomes to Tando and Geralt! It's so nice to have you here.
What are the biggest changes in your lives so far?
Two things, friends.
1. I find myself feeling saddened by SR friends who have not yet achieved lasting peaceful sobriety. I think this is a growing stage for me. I need to find new tools to help me keep supporting them strongly without taking it personally. Cause lord knows I've got some character opportunities I'm still working on! This is projection, surely. As I am kinder to myself, I am kinder to others, and vice versa. Any ESH for me on this one?
2. I think I'm at a new growing place in Recovery. My depression lifted last year with my ongoing medication (THANK GOD) but sometimes I feel it at the edges. I can't just up my medication to "make it go away." I'm at the correct therapeutic dose and that's that. I need to deal with/acknowledge/accept/solve what's bothering me. This is Life.
Go get Monday and give it a HUG Overs!
What are the biggest changes in your lives so far?
Two things, friends.
1. I find myself feeling saddened by SR friends who have not yet achieved lasting peaceful sobriety. I think this is a growing stage for me. I need to find new tools to help me keep supporting them strongly without taking it personally. Cause lord knows I've got some character opportunities I'm still working on! This is projection, surely. As I am kinder to myself, I am kinder to others, and vice versa. Any ESH for me on this one?
2. I think I'm at a new growing place in Recovery. My depression lifted last year with my ongoing medication (THANK GOD) but sometimes I feel it at the edges. I can't just up my medication to "make it go away." I'm at the correct therapeutic dose and that's that. I need to deal with/acknowledge/accept/solve what's bothering me. This is Life.
Go get Monday and give it a HUG Overs!
Re-Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Posts: 7,583
Welcome Geralt!
You are from one of my favorite countries to hang out in. Mostly the Amersfoort and Utricht areas, with day visits into Amsterdam. Both for business and pleasure. For the 7 years we lived in Europe, we never missed a Queen's day sale!
Congrats on your year!
:day
You are from one of my favorite countries to hang out in. Mostly the Amersfoort and Utricht areas, with day visits into Amsterdam. Both for business and pleasure. For the 7 years we lived in Europe, we never missed a Queen's day sale!
Congrats on your year!
:day
Re-Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Posts: 7,583
Manz,
Don't sweat it at all. I am glad to have you as my friend for so long. I look forward to that being the case for a long time. I am not always clear as my thoughts outrun my one finger typing!
Don't sweat it at all. I am glad to have you as my friend for so long. I look forward to that being the case for a long time. I am not always clear as my thoughts outrun my one finger typing!
Re-Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Posts: 7,583
Frances,
My experience with that has been that I had to check my premises, the rules and prejudices I brought to the roles of support and caregiver, and not mix them up.
For me it starts wth me. Do I feel sorry for them going through it yet again once they know what to do? Or do I understand how disappointed with themselves they are, having been there myself.
I realized years ago that when I felt sorry for another I was looking down on them, and had no respect for them. Sympathy.
I realized that I can understand how they feel and validate their feelings as real by putting myself in their place for a moment. Empathy.
Insofar as not feeling sad, that there is no help for. That is the seduction of substance abuse, no feelings. Feelings are our emotional response to external stimuli. Anger, sadness, joy, and the other thousands of nuances of our inner beings manifest in a response we call feelings.
If we lose a loved one we can't avoid feeling sad. If we are cut off in the road while driving we might feel conflicting emotions ranging from anger to fear to fight or flight and an adrenaline rush.
We can't control emotions, we can control how we act on them. I will feel sad when friends fall back into relapse. Heck I feel sad when a newbie pops up with one post asking for help but then won't come back from fear and feelings if helplessness.
For me empathizing and avoiding sympathizing works. It channels my response to the emotions giving the other space and freedom from my lack of respect by looking down on them or patronizing them in feeling sorry for them. Empathy demands I acknowledge that they own their feelings and how they act them out, and let them make their own choices. I have to conciously do that because I am a co-dependent who tries to fix eveything for everybody. I realized that and learned how to channel it into counseling, mentoring, and teaching early on, and it has served.
My experience with that has been that I had to check my premises, the rules and prejudices I brought to the roles of support and caregiver, and not mix them up.
For me it starts wth me. Do I feel sorry for them going through it yet again once they know what to do? Or do I understand how disappointed with themselves they are, having been there myself.
I realized years ago that when I felt sorry for another I was looking down on them, and had no respect for them. Sympathy.
I realized that I can understand how they feel and validate their feelings as real by putting myself in their place for a moment. Empathy.
Insofar as not feeling sad, that there is no help for. That is the seduction of substance abuse, no feelings. Feelings are our emotional response to external stimuli. Anger, sadness, joy, and the other thousands of nuances of our inner beings manifest in a response we call feelings.
If we lose a loved one we can't avoid feeling sad. If we are cut off in the road while driving we might feel conflicting emotions ranging from anger to fear to fight or flight and an adrenaline rush.
We can't control emotions, we can control how we act on them. I will feel sad when friends fall back into relapse. Heck I feel sad when a newbie pops up with one post asking for help but then won't come back from fear and feelings if helplessness.
For me empathizing and avoiding sympathizing works. It channels my response to the emotions giving the other space and freedom from my lack of respect by looking down on them or patronizing them in feeling sorry for them. Empathy demands I acknowledge that they own their feelings and how they act them out, and let them make their own choices. I have to conciously do that because I am a co-dependent who tries to fix eveything for everybody. I realized that and learned how to channel it into counseling, mentoring, and teaching early on, and it has served.
non-drinker
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Posts: 13,828
Welcome to Tando and Geralt. Always good to see more "one-year" members.
I'm off for my lunch hour stroll. I've been walking twice a day and I'm really starting to feel the benefits.
Have a great day, all!
I'm off for my lunch hour stroll. I've been walking twice a day and I'm really starting to feel the benefits.
Have a great day, all!
Administrator
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,351
I still feel sad when people I've come to know here 'go back out' Frances...I think every thinking feeling person does.
But I had to work on my boundaries here or I would have left a long time ago, a quivering mess.
I know my job is to share my experience.
It's not my job to oversee what others do with that experience, or to make them take my experience...or to run their journey for them.
I got where I am today by a lot of luck - but a lot of mistakes too...I have to let others find their own way...
I like to think they have someone looking after them and that they'll make it, just like I did
D
But I had to work on my boundaries here or I would have left a long time ago, a quivering mess.
I know my job is to share my experience.
It's not my job to oversee what others do with that experience, or to make them take my experience...or to run their journey for them.
I got where I am today by a lot of luck - but a lot of mistakes too...I have to let others find their own way...
I like to think they have someone looking after them and that they'll make it, just like I did
D
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