Babs1234

hugs to you Drake-Hang in there buddy.

Viperidae

Sorry Drake, I wish you could revel today. I keep crawling into bed too. In fact I'm in bed right now.

Jennie I see your signature every time and it is working on me. "The shortest answer is just do the thing."

My big problem is doing productive things. I have not gone to the gym or really started to really get rid of things in my apartment, because the mere thought of those things sends me into violent seizures. My modus operandi was to start drinking, pop a ritalin, and get to work. I can't do that anymore for 2 reasons. I am an addict, and those things stopped working and make me ill for 3 days.

What happens if....????!!! That is my major malfunction. I need to take action including getting going on the apartment, selling off my stuff. Facing down my father. And making a plan, and ACTING ON IT, for the future.

I wrote about the situation. I think it helped. I will save it just in case. It is a book, and I am embarrassed to look like a brat of some kind. I am not. All I really need to do is list a few things on Ebay and Craigslist and sell them. It is not that hard. I want this place cleaned out, but I am seemingly incapable of acting. I just crawl into bed.

I know all the phrases. "Just do a little at a time." "The longest journey begins with a single step." Blah blah f-ing blah. This is paralysis on a level that goes beyond that, to some really deep seated psychological issues. I have nothing to lose by living my life. I am scared of losing security, but to have the life I want, I cannot be afraid of risk. 15 years in a place is a very long time to get cemented into just living a secure life, without living at all. The fact is, THERE IS NO SECURITY EVER.

Real techniques? Can I just say over and over, "The outcome does not matter. Just do this part now. What dad thinks does not matter." Again and again and again? I have no clue how to get the OCD out my head. Is that the AV that says, what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if if what if what if what if ??????????

Viperidae

You see the haze I'm in?

Dee74

I think sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith Johnny.
The faith that says 'where I end up must be better than here'

If thats hard for you, and I get it is - maybe you need eventually to consider talking to someone professionally about those deep seated issues?

D

Soberpotamus

Johnny, I am doing this new thing where I pick 3 big things for the day that must get done. And no matter what, do my best to get those done... no matter the dirty dishes, no matter I forgot to floss, no matter if dinner is cooked from scratch or frozen meal... The 3 Big Rocks. So, today my 3 Big Rocks were: Meditate on my zafu for an hour, run 3 miles, and meet my sponsor for our weekly session. Session got cancelled due to weather.

Also... a trick to get started... pick something and do it for just 2 minutes. See where that leads.

Viperidae

Thanks Jennie. Will try it!

NotSoIvory

I can relate to this to some degree. I've lived much of my life planning and planning and never doing the action part. It hasn't been until just very recently that I've been able to have that subside enough to become relatively productive. My place was a mess, I was a mess, my bills were typically put off until the last minute, didn't do laundry enough so sometimes having to wear the same clothes 2 days in a row... just to name a few. I would seriously rather sit there for hours and stare at a wall than actually do something. Never had a problem with the planning part. For some reason I actually enjoyed that. Then I would sit there and admire my fine plan and think how great it was... if only I ever actually followed through. So much time I've wasted doing that. I think it's the whole obsessing thing.
Also, I can relate to the living in fear. From doing fun and spontaneous things to trying for a new opportunity, or speaking my mind when it might not be well received by others, especially if it struck a sensitive chord... etc etc etc...Fear would dictate my every move. I've only now been realizing JUST how much my life has been ruled by fear. If you could even call it that before. A life, that is. It was not much of one, and I often felt that I had no purpose and just wanted to end it all.

How true that there is never any assured security... Even if we try to avoid all risks and dangers. A terrifying thought. But something that we cannot change and also a reason to give ourselves permission to live.

Curiously, have you thought about working the steps of AA?

Thought I would share a little of my own experience from my mere 54 days and maybe you or anyone might find something useful. Or maybe not, but it's worth a shot. Seems pertinent to me.
In my beginning, the abstaining has helped the fog begin to clear, the mood swings to even out... But that's just the beginning. There is so much crud underneath that. Now facing all of this stuff without the crutch.
I admitted to myself and others that I was an alcoholic year and years ago. That apparently wasn't enough, because I was apparently fine with carrying on that way. Now, I have not only admitted, but now I have SUBMITTED to the fact that I am an alcoholic. Does that make sense to anyone?

The healing truly begins with the deep soul searching and honesty with myself. It is beginning to help me see the deep inner kinks so I might begin to try to work them out. I think it starts there. On the deep, deep inside... but first we need to clear out all the poisons and mind altering substances so we can begin. At first I had to just try to focus on keeping myself more or less contented and calm (easier said than done) and try to understand my triggers and unhealthy inner dialogue (AV) so I could combat it and pursue healthier solutions. I am remembering right now how HARD just doing that was at first. It took absolutely everything from me and drained me completely. But soon, when the mornings came, free and clear, anxiety subsiding, how nice it was to greet a new day and put the worries of the night before behind me. Like an opportunity for a fresh beginning every day. And what a great way to start, clear minded and fresh. Not every day is exactly like that, of course, some days are unbelievably hard, but I've held onto that and I keep it in my tool box. Before, I was beginning to think I was mentally ill. Turns out, I was, but it was purely self inflicted, and as time goes on sober, it gets easier to function.

It so helps to talk about it with others who are understanding and supporting. Thanks all.

NotSoIvory

I like these concepts. Thank you.
Often starting is the hardest part.

I've been tracking and grading my daily activities by goals, points for not drinking or smoking being worth the most of course! Don't think this is for everyone, but it works for the way my brain is wired. lol I was tracking my moods for a long while too with ***** emoticons pasted onto a spreadsheet. It's helped me to monitor and pinpoint harmful patterns and triggers. Seems silly, I know, but hey whatever works, right? Looking back through it, you can see a clear progression toward emotional stability.

Viperidae

Thanks DG, yes I am an amazing planner. When I was in school I was an amazing researcher. I love that stuff. What I am terrible at is taking the planning and doing something, or taking the research and writing a paper. I had to get bent for days on end to write papers.

Ivory, that's pretty cool stuff. I'll have to keep track of things. And scheduling is my toughest point. Lord, I can't schedule to save my life. I can't say what I'm doing in an hour.

So I will some things, besides not drink. I'm going through withdrawals again. And my allergies are back full swing. Amazingly they subsided. That's what happens I guess. Drink once and it's all over.

I'll try to do something every day that I don't want to do. I'll be cognizant of the fears. I'll have to use some CBT techniques there to do those. I wish I had taken more advantage of that CBT therapist instead of drinking my way through it. I'm pretty sure it can't work if your thinking is fatally flawed anyway. Now that my thinking is better I might be able to use techniques of altering my thoughts.

Thanks all. That post got me more responses than a lot of things I put up. I guess it was a genuine question.



More later.

DG0409

Johnny- Perhaps it would help to write down what it is you're risking.

When we drink, we risk losing our lives, damaging relationships with our loved ones, damaging our relationships with ourselves, damaging out health, etc.

If you really think about it, you ARE able to accept risks. Like you said, you can't live without risk. But if you make a list of what you have to lose from most of the stuff that sobriety asks of us, it's really not that bad compared to the risks of drinking.

And then we accept risks from NOT doing a thing. Not doing things is frequently riskier than doing them. Like going to the gym: sure there is some small risk you'll be walking on the treadmill, forget to keep walking, go flying off the back and hurt yourself. But by not going, you risk your health even more because sitting around ain't good for you.

A lot of times, we fear things irrationally: we may be afraid of the feeling of risk, but if we analyze the situation the risk may be acceptable. If you write about what exactly the risk is, you may see that you're not really afraid of it.

Also, it takes TIME. I never realized how screwed up my life was from all the drinking until I quit and almost 2 months later, I still have a HUGE pile of things to tackle. We have to just be patient with ourselves. Especially since the first few months off the alcohol are really hard at times.

I sometimes kind of imagine I'm putting myself through my own self-constructed recovery/rehab program. A lot of people go to a 30 day rehab just to get 30 days clean and all they worry about is getting clean. So, at first we have to focus on just not drinking. Then the other stuff falls into place, but it takes time. Sometimes I worry about things and I tell myself that it is an 'After 90 days topic'. There are things that are not something that I'm ready to deal with yet or strong enough to face yet, so I put it off. I do tackle what I can each day, but a day is only so long and there is so much to do and I have to also eat and sleep and exercise and remember a zillion other things that I am doing so much better at than I used to.

Sometimes, we make things harder than they have to be. It's ok if you don't make it to the gym: start with a few pushups at home and a 10 minute walk around the neighborhood. After a few weeks, you'll be able to do more pushups and feel motivated by that to want to do more.

DG0409

59 days for me today.

Soberpotamus

Congrats!!

NotSoIvory

I can't follow a schedule very well either and don't want to. The only schedule I try to follow is my work schedule because it's mandatory. Schedules make me feel trapped and like everything I have to do is a chore.

Soberpotamus

Wow, really interesting I like this idea. How were you able to monitor the emoticons? Or did you just monitor by sight?

NotSoIvory

Great point and post, DG! Thank you.

Soberpotamus

They are from zenhabits.net and from his ebook Zen To Done.

Soberpotamus

Great point. Isn't it odd that we easily see the risks of doing it, but not so easily the risks of NOT doing it?? Interesting

Babs1234

ya whooooo DG

NotSoIvory

I started with a weekly template divided up by half hours in the day. I went to the page on the internet with ***** emoticons and saved the little faces I needed to my computer. When my emotion would change I would insert the faces that best described my state onto the spreadsheet. If there was a particular reason for it, I would make sure to note that. (I'd try to do this nightly or in the morning the next day.) Pretty simple really and doesn't take much time.
When I track my activities, different colors are what I use to portray the nature of certain activities I was doing. (I'm very visual.) Work is green, exercise is cyan, drinking RED, eating bad choice foods maroon, eating good choice foods spring green. (That's how I've been monitoring my eating too, that and Fitday.com) I put all of it on the same spreadsheet but kept it fairly simple and not too wordy.

Soberpotamus

There's an iPhone app called iPromises that sort of does this. I've used it since April. It gives different emotions and you get to select from them, and then it monitors your changes over time in a sort of spreadsheet. Really great idea I though! Because it's hard for some of us to even realize the emotions we're feeling anyway! Gets all tangled sometimes