It's been a while since I last posted. I've been travelling and that's always dangerous. The travel itself isn't dangerous. I drove nice rental cars and stayed in decent hotels. The hard part about travel is that it breaks up routines. One of the biggest keys to my recovery is being careful not to spend too much time with my biggest enemy...me. Addiction thrives in isolation. When I'm by myself for too long a stretch of time my addiction addled brain starts to play tricks on me. The focus that comes with journaling, prayer and regular meetings is crucial to maintaining health in the most vital arena, my thought life.
Human beings are unique in all of God's creation for a lot of reasons. One is our ability to think about how we think. It's this ability that created an entire profession, psychiatry. Counselors and psychologists are successful only inasmuch as they are able to help us think about how we think. What is it I tell myself when I lose an account at work? I could tell myself that I'm a loser who lacks any real skill. I could tell myself that I don't deserve the job I have and if anyone finds out how imcompetent I am I won't be there for long. From that thought process would grow fear and paranoia about being "found out." On the other hand, I could tell myself that I'm amazing at the job I do and the lost account is just something that happens to someone who brings in as much business as I do. You're bound to lose every now and again. It's just the rhythm of life. Same event, two ways to think about it. My thought life is the key and for too many years I let the addict hold that key in his grubby, selfish little hands.
Addiction is driven, in part, by fear and self-loathing. My thought life was poisoned by a need to be accepted and acceptable. I set standards impossible for any human being to keep then judged myself by those standards. This caused me to hide and erect elaborate false fronts to protect myself from being found out. Behind the facade I was acting out addictively to smother the pain of not being real with people, convinced that the real me would repulse "normal" folks.
One of the greatest gifts of recovery was to sit in a meeting and find out that everyone was just as messed-up as I am. In fact, some even more than me and some less. Bottom line I wasn't going to be ostracized from society for being normal. All these years I'd been suffering from a corrupted thought life. I had adopted an unrealistic view of how I was supposed to behave and didn't allow myself to be human. I rejected my natural emotional range labeling some emotions as unacceptable. Instead of learning how to deal with being human, I immersed myself in addictive behavior that numbed the pain and crippled me.
I'm much healthier now but the damage done by years of polluted thought still makes relying on my own thinking dangerous. I need to be sharing my thoughts on a regular basis with other people. With my counselor, in my 12 step group, with a sponsor and as opportunities present themselves. I used to bristle at the idea of talking to anyone about what I was thinking...good or bad. Another sign of addiction, I've found, is the utter arrogance of thinking that I always know best in every situation. I didn't even realize how bad it was until recently. Through recovery I've become very comfortable with saying, "I don't know." It can be about anything, big or small. A while ago I happened to say that in answer to a question my wife asked. She laughed joyously and thanked me for that simple answer. Apparently, in my active addiction I'd never claimed not to know things. I needed to be the expert on everything and in so doing had become tiresome to my wife and probably a lot of other people, too. I don't want to be tiresome anymore but I'm okay if I am now and then! I want a thought life that is whole and healthy. That means sharing and truly valuing the thoughts of others who are pursuing the recovered life.
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