desertsweetpea

I am thinking this morning about my fear of sobriety. After years and years of avoiding, ignoring and drinking away any unpleasant feelings I honestly don't know how to function like a well adjusted adult. As miserable as I am as an alcoholic the thought of changing my life seems terrifying . I'm on day 5 and the physical cravings and anxiety are slowly fading, I should be happy about that but I know once my focus is off of the immediate physical effects the challenge has just begun. Should I trust my emotions at all right now or am I setting myself up for failure?

biminiblue

Just be patient and kind with yourself. Give yourself the compassion you would give any friend going through this.

Your thoughts will sort themselves. The first few weeks for me were very difficult but I've come to a very peaceful place now. The brain is all over the place at first. I had to watch out for self-pity and resentment and deal them a swift death blow.

Great job! Time is all you'll need.

Nuudawn

Well, welcome to the (SR) club. I'm right there with ya Sweet Pea. Sobriety is not all sunshine and lolipops. We have to start growing and learning and do the work we didn't do years ago. That is why it is so incredibly important to have support in recovery. We are all in the same boat friend...which makes it sooooooooo much easier and pleasant. We are all here starting again..learning how to live...for real.

PurpleKnight

It'll all take time, we used our addiction to escape feelings/emotions, it'll be a learning curve to learn how to deal with them without our addiction!!

Hang in there!!

360shoes

Hi DSP,
I felt that way too. It took me awhile to get used to feelings. Heck, I couldn't even identify which feeling I was feeling at first. They all seemed to blur into the same. Anger and fear felt the same, anxious and excitement felt the same. Took me awhile to sort them out. I'm still sorting them out. It's okay.

I try real hard to remember that no matter what I feel. It just a feeling. It will pass. There are no wrong or right ones. They just are feelings. My actions because of them is what matters.

This was important for me to work on because I drank to either change them or hide them. That didn't work too well for me. Only way for me was to just feel them...sober.

That was over a year ago. I'm pretty good at them now. Not perfect but pretty darn good. I can get scared, angry, happy, dopey and sleepy and I don't run for a bottle. I just feel what I feel. Every chance I get to feel one is an opportunity to learn how to accept them. And excepting them is excepting me.

Hang in there. You can do it. It is better. It's not what you feel. It's what you do when you feel it. You will feel scared again. Might as well get some experience learning how to handle scared in a positive way.

Congrats on the 5 days! You can do this!!

hokey

Welcome to SR sweatpea. When the fog started to lift, I found it helpful to go back and read my early posts to remind myself of the state I was in when I came here. I don't want to go back to that, the guilt and shame, the desperation. Keep on keeping on ... one day at a time!

ScottFromWI

It's normal to feel the way you are I think. The hardest part is in relation to your first comment about "drinking away" our troubles. The problem is that you didn't really drink them away at all, you merely postponed dealing with them. In fact, the drinking probably made some of them worse.

The good news is that all this is absolutely correctible in time. Once you sober up, you can start dealing with life on its own terms. And get the satisfaction of accomplishing things. Start small....tasks you can easily complete. You will work yourself up to the biggies before you know it.