I have often wished that I could turn my emotions off...sometimes permanently! This has been especially true after I became clean and sober because I was no longer numbing or totally obliterating those feelings with booze and drugs. I was learning all over again what I think I always knew deep down: that feeling could really hurt!
But if I was going to make this change and live in recovery, I was going to have to learn to deal with my emotions. It has not been an easy process, let me assure you. It became even more complicated and difficult because of all the repressed feelings and emotion from my past...being raped, all the guilt from my past behavior...from hurting people, the fears and feelings of inadequacy that I have had as long as I can remember and on and on.
I'm not even sure I could write a post documenting how I have worked through all of that stuff. Let's just say I have had a great deal of therapy, I've learned to openly and honestly express my feelings and act on them in real time. Honesty and communication have been the keys here for me.
There are certain practices that I have borrowed that were critical to me becoming healthy and stable enough to continue to grow into a more emotionally healthy human being. There was a whole process of steps I followed to take care of the wreckage from the past, to recognize who and what I was (an alcoholic/addict) and develop a spiritual life based on God and living in service to others. This took a great deal of time and a lot of support from people who had been through the very same things. (If you are really interested in knowing the details and specifics of these steps I took, email me at thormoo1016@gmail.com and I email you the information)
I could not learn to deal with my emotions without becoming stable and sober first...they went hand in hand. That is why trying to explain this process here in detail is impossible and I would have to leave certain details out or it would take perhaps hundreds of pages to cover everything...
Now with all that being said, I come to the reason I posted here in the first place...
I still have trouble at times with my emotions getting the best of me. I mentioned in an earlier post today that out of the blue I was feeling "weepy". Yep, this happens as do other similar type behaviors. I've always believed that I was a person who felt things very deeply and I am more convinced then ever that it is true. I think the tragic, traumatic experiences from my past have made me even more sensitive and intense where my emotions are concerned.
Obviously when I drank and doped, I could try and "control" this a bit but now it's another story all together and I have to cope with them just the way they are. And my emotions are extremely intense and powerful today and sometimes I really wish they weren't...but hey, it IS what it IS...that is my reality today.
My life has changed spiritually a great deal in the past 9 months and it has had a very positive affect on me emotionally...I do seem to operate on a more even keel typically though I still have times where my feelings will spike a bit between the highs and lows. Yet these episodes themselves seem to actually diminish more quickly then in the past. I see that as progress, no doubt about it....
So those thoughts about my feelings and emotions have suddenly weighed quite heavily on my mind the last few days. But since I've given some thought to the subject it doesn't seem to be as critical as it once was. And that is representative really, of how dealing with something openly and honestly in real time works for me. Things don't seem so impossible this way and I don't get my emotions all tied up in knots trying to figure everything out for myself...
