What Winners Do - An Addiction Recovery Blog » life skills

Breathing A Sigh of Relief

Erin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:57:14 +0000

I have been going on for a couple of posts about my inability to talk about some stuff that has really been bothering me. Well, it is with a huge sigh of relief that I tell you that I was finally able to open up about these issues (the details of which I won't bore you with). I should have done it sooner.

I still had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the conversation but once I was in it... I was so glad I was. Things are not magically fixed but I feel a hell of a lot better now that I've gotten a few things off my chest. Funny how that works huh?

So then this leads me back to the same question I have been having... "why do I find it so hard to talk about my feelings?". I just don't get it. Am I afraid of the reaction I will get? I don't know. What I do know is that nothing but heartache comes from keeping your feelings in and that I absolutely need work in this area of myself. But who doesn't need work right?

Today I have a sense of relief that I haven't had in a long, long time. I need to remember this feeling the next time I think about stuffing my feelings. I'm grateful that I can spot these destructive habits in myself before they get way out of hand. I'm grateful for a lot of things these days.

Riding Out the Ups and Downs of Life

Erin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:30:20 +0000

Life is a series of ups and downs, ebbs and flows. There are many times in our lives when we notice that a significant amount of time has passed with no real calamities. But then...

There are those times in our lives when it seems that nothing goes right. From the moment our feet hit the floor in the morning until our head hits the pillow at night it seems that everything that could go wrong does.

It seems that these are the very times that we used to try to avoid in active addiction with the use of drugs and alcohol. So what now?

You gotta ride out tough times. But sometimes our tough times is not as simple as us having a bad day. What happens when we have a bad week, a bad month or even a bad year. These things happen.

How do we keep ourselves from numbing the pain? How do we keep from getting overwhelmed and trying to escape?

I guess we just have to use what we have learned in our recovery right? There is a reason why we have worked so hard at taking things one day or even one moment at a time... because it works.

I'm going through a period of time which wouldn't be classified as fun. I guess I'll let you know how I ride it out.

Taking Responsibility For Our Choices

Erin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:19:44 +0000

Our choices in life, good or bad, are just that... ours. Because of that, we need to take responsibility for our choices. What may seem like a poor choice to one person may make complete sense to another. None of us know exactly how life is going to play out so all we can do is make choices in life that are based on self honesty.

I talked recently about staying honest with myself and how for a long time I had been just going with the flow to avoid hurting anyone close to me. Thankfully I realized that no one can go on like that forever. It was a tough and painful lesson to learn but I'm so fortunate to have learned it.

Having said that, I still need to take responsibility for all of my choices. I chose for a long time not to be honest with myself. I chose for a long time not to be honest with those close to me. I chose to go along with a life that deep down I knew wasn't for me... and now I'm dealing with the aftermath of those choices.

There is definitely some good that will come from having to take responsibility for my choices. I can tell you that from now on the choices I make in life will be based on self honesty. I will no longer consider ONLY how others will be affected by my choices but also how I truly feel. If I cannot be honest with myself then how could I possibly be honest with anyone else?

I'm feeling pretty bad that I'm having to hurt and disappoint some people that are close to me but at the same time I'm pretty proud of myself for finally being truly honest. This is a lesson that I do not want to soon forget. I owe it to myself and to those around me to work on keeping this fresh in my mind.

I think that taking responsibility for your choices in life becomes a much easier thing to do if those choices can be backed up by the fact that you were just being true to yourself.

What Do You Do To Make Yourself Feel Better?

Erin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:52:36 +0000

There was a time when my way of making myself feel better involved numbing myself... usually into oblivion. That was pretty much my go to answer for every situation that I encountered that made me feel... well just feel.

It's been a long time since I have used drugs to change the way I was feeling, 2 years this coming Monday as a matter of fact. In this time, I have still had all the same things that life throws at you, I've just avoided using to change the way I feel. But when you are having feels of doubt, feelings of pain, anger, sadness... what do you do to make yourself feel better?

Me? I have found that writing helps me. If I sit down and just get everything out of my head and onto paper, I feel a sense of relief. Once I'm able to look at my thoughts and feelings on paper... nothing ever seems as bad as it did in my head. This blog helps out a bunch too but as honest as I try to be on here and as deep as I try to dig... I find myself holding back from time to time. It can be pretty hard to be 100% forthcoming when you know that family and friends can read it.

But when it's just me alone with my personal journal I feel the freedom to write whatever is on my mind. It's a good feeling and it really helps me a lot. One of the ways that it helps is by allowing me to really get to the root of some of my anger and fears. It's much easier to talk to other people about these things after you have an idea of what the true meaning behind your feelings are.

While I think that writing is a huge help, I don't think it replaces talking to other people about your problems. Sometimes you need to know that someone else can identify with what you are going through. It helps you to see that you are not the exception but more the rule. People are pretty similar when you strip away all the bullshit and it's good to be reminded of that every once in a while.

I guess the gist of this post is to say that writing and talking make me feel better. Wow... what an epiphany

Getting Back To Center In Addiction Recovery

Erin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:12:49 +0000

Many, many times since entering into addiction recovery and starting this blog you have heard me say that my recovery ebbs and flows. I'm either on point, full steam ahead or I'm just barely hanging in there... trying to survive.

Lately I felt that I have been neither of those two scenarios. I have actually been dead center or I guess you could say... centered.

In my last post I talked about finding balance in addiction recovery. This has been an area that has caused me the most problems in life. I have a hard time finding the balance in life.

I understand that everyone has ups and downs in life, it's unavoidable. But I think that my inability to find any sort of balance was a huge part of those ups and downs.

I am now committed to finding my center in addiction recovery and my entire life. I don't want to burn myself out so often and have to wait around while my fire builds back up for something else.

I'm determined.

Epiphanies: Slowly Building Up Life Skills In Addiction Recovery

Erin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:22:59 +0000

So I've talked, almost a sickening amount, about how active addiction keeps us from developing life skills. But what I really haven't discussed is how being in addiction recovery makes building up life skills possible.

There I am driving down the road. I should be concentrating on, oh I don't know... driving. But I'm not. I'm thinking about what it would take for my husband, my son and myself to be able to move out of where we live now. This train of thought somehow turned into setting goals for myself and then... Boom. It hit me, an epiphany.

An epiphany you say. Wow. Did you figure out the cure for some horrible disease? Nope. I figured out how to properly set goals for myself. Goals you say. What are you like 16 years old? Nope. I'm 30.

The reason why I bring up this particular situation is because I wanted to point out that in my recovery I never really set out to build up one particular life skill, then work at it and have it happen. It usually results when I'm not expecting it. Hence the epiphany feeling.

There was a time in my very early recovery when I felt like a horrible person. I felt that I didn't possess even the most basic skills to get along in this world. This is coming from the mother of a 5 year old by the way. It was a pretty dismal time in my life.

But slowly as time went on (time takes time... anyone?) I started to see that I'm not a bad person. I'm not lazy or stupid, I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the most basic situations because I never worked on my life skills.

My life skills had consisted of feeling happy, sad, mad, nervous, scared, etc. and then using some sort of mood altering substance. Then... nope that was about it.

Once I was no longer numbing myself I started to search for other solutions to life's everyday occurrences. If you are truly working on experiencing and accepting your feelings then really what other choice do you have but to start to do healthy and productive things in your life to make yourself feel better? Remember... Easy Does It But Do It.

It's through this basic way that you begin to learn and build up your life skills in addiction recovery. Don't be embarrassed to say that you don't know how to properly do something. The only embarrassing thing would be if you were unwilling to learn.

As For Patience… I Have None

Erin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:01:47 +0000

From time to time we all struggle right? So what am I struggling with at the moment? Patience. Actually a lack of patience better describes it.

There are times when I go along feeling pretty centered. Unshakable even. Right now? Not so much. I'm flying off the handle more often than I would like.

So how do you deal with a lack of patience? No really, I'm asking. So far... I'm not dealing so well. I find myself shaking my head a lot and saying "I can't, I just fucking can't". Well that's no way to deal right.

But then you know, you think of some of the things that you've learned in recovery. Usually about this time a nice recovery catch phrase fits nicely. Something like... "this too shall pass". You just kind of hang on and ride it out.

So that's where I am at right now... just trying to hang on and ride it out. I'll let you know how that works out for me

Handling Things As They Come

Erin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:45:38 +0000

Early in recovery I learned that is very important to handle things as they come up. What does this mean? It means not putting off any problem just because I feel like I can't deal with it at the moment. It means facing problems head on. It means not saying, I'll do it tomorrow... cause we all know that aint happening .

Somehow I let this practice slip to the wayside for a while. The result? I felt overwhelmed with problems and situations that I had left unaddressed. What does this overwhelmed feeling lead to? It leads to a sense of dread over the future. Things left unaddressed don't just go away. Small problems get bigger and bigger until they explode. Then you're left to pick up the pieces. Not a great way to live.

The remedy? Deal with things as they come up. End of story. That's all it takes. Even if you're not perfect at doing that... it's a nice thing to strive for. I'm not sure why I have such a hard time with this pretty basic idea. What is it inside of me that wants to just avoid problems and conflicts? It's not that avoiding things makes me feel good. It does just the opposite. It makes me feel bad about myself. So why then do I tend to do this?

Maybe this is just one of the things I will never know the answer to. Maybe it's enough that I realize that I have a tendency to do this, it allows me to work on not doing it.

Sometimes I forget that I'm always going to be a work in progress. It's easy to lose perspective on that. I guess the fact that I'm realizing different areas of myself need work is a great thing. It just shows that I am a self aware person and that I'm able to keep myself in check before things get totally out of hand. I guess that's what it's all about right?