What Winners Do – An Addiction Recovery Blog Stories, Struggles And Success of A Recovering Addict Trying to Do What Winners Do

Backsliding or Human Imperfection?

I think that although I appear to be very easy going I am actually much harder on myself than what is needed. I feel that every so often I lose sight of the fact that to have imperfections is to be human.

Sure, I can tell you that you should ease up on yourself because after all... you're just a person and as we all know, no one is perfect. So why is it that when I see myself slip up here and there (not in my sobriety.. just everyday kind of things) that I right away jump to the fact that I must be backsliding into my old ways?

Why am I not easier and more understanding with myself?

I guess at this stage of my recovery I feel that being very rigid with myself about certain things is the only way that I will make it.

I feel that I cannot trust myself to just get done what needs to get done without being on a strict schedule or living by certain rules because in the past... that never worked.

I'm afraid of slipping back to that place where I am so lax with myself that I choose the easy way out of every single situation I'm faced with no matter how it affects others or how it makes me look. That of course left me feeling bad and you know what happens when I feel bad on a consistent basis right?  That's right, I start looking for the easy way out of that too which always involves a mood altering substance.

But see, I take a simple thing like not getting the bathroom cleaned on the day I had planned to do it and make the leap that I'm headed back to my old ways. There is no in between with me right now. I don't want it to always be like that.

I don't want to be so hard on myself. I want to be able to truly accept that fact that I'm just a human with imperfections. It's tough to know the difference between behaviors that are the result of many years lived with an addiciton and behaviors that are just human nature. I get lost in that sometimes.

But you know what I would tell someone else right? I would tell them to just worry about today. Don't think about tomorrow until you're there. Deal with your actions and your behaviors based on today and not the past. As long as you are striving to do the best that you can today then you have nothing to fear in tomorrow. Good advice... if I could only follow it right?

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Support in Addiction Recovery
2. Addiction Recovery: Sickness or Backsliding?
3. In Every Life There Is A Little Self Doubt… Right?
4. Learning To Like Yourself: Addiction Recovery
5. Avoiding Isolation In Addiction Recovery… It Aint Easy