I am so excited to let y’all know that we have found a new meeting location for our support groups! Starting this Monday 9/22 at 6pm, we will be meeting at The Library Vintage at 48 E. Township in Fayetteville. The space is disability friendly & queer friendly!
We have had to miss two weeks of support groups due to Day by Day Healing suddenly needing to close and move offices. I apologize so deeply to everyone who has encountered any stress from the meetings being canceled. I hope to see y’all at our new spot on Monday!
As it turns out, life in recovery isn’t always smooth sailing. Challenges still come up, as things are constantly either coming together or falling apart. The key difference here is: how do we confront challenges without immediately running from them into addictive relief?
As scary as it sounds, growth and healing can be found in leaning into discomfort.
Maybe I sound like a broken record, but that’s good. Learning occurs through repetition so I’ll say it again. It is time to lean into discomfort.
You. Are. Going. To. Have. To. Feel. Uncomfortable.
So much of our behavior and choices in active addiction are made based on a fear of feeling uncomfortable. And what I mean by uncomfortable is any number of the more “difficult” emotions: stress, anger, sadness, grief, lethargy, boredom, along with changes, cravings, and challenges. This is when the addicted voice does its finest work: “Want to avoid this difficult feeling or situation? Time to drink/use!”
Of course we don’t want to feel uncomfortable. It’s…uncomfortable. The whole thing about it though, is that the fear of the feeling is often much more intense than facing it head on. Suppressing stress, challenges, or emotions doesn’t make them go away. They get stuffed down into a box, which gets fuller and fuller, until it starts to burst at the seams and the suppressed emotions start show up in life in unexpected ways. Drinking doesn’t warsh away your sorrows, it merely crams them down until there’s no more space for cramming.
The solution? Lean into the discomfort and experience that shit.
I like to illustrate this as a bullseye: in the middle is our safe zone or our comfort zone. This is where we generally reside, and where our addiction lives. If we get a little bit outside of the comfort zone, we can experience growth if we sit with the discomfort and don’t run from it or suppress it. Outside of the growth zone is the panic zone. This is when our body begins to enter fight or flight, and we are much too far outside of our comfort zone. We don’t experience growth in the panic zone, and if we identify ourselves there, it’s important to use grounding techniques to bring ourselves back into our body and out of our heads.
The amazing thing about practicing feeling uncomfortable, is that each time you do it, you become stronger. Your body and brain learn that being uncomfortable is not a threat that we need to run from, and they begin to adapt to this new understanding of reality. Eventually, you get so good at being uncomfortable, that it becomes your super power. You can encounter life’s most awful circumstances, and drinking/using does not even cross your mind. Because you are fucking strong.
Having our meeting space suddenly close down was a significant stressor for me, and for our group. Instead of feeling hopeless and deciding to drink, I decided to engage with my community and solve the problem. Life in recovery is still challenging, but by facing discomfort as a practice, we can meet challenges head-on instead of running from them.
You can do this.
May you be happy and free, dear reader.
Announcements and such:
New meeting location! The Library Vintage 48 E. Township in Fayetteville, Mondays at 6pm.
This week’s podcast episode is a bit more of Early’s story, and the two mental shifts that made their recovery go from impossible to possible. Click here to listen!
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Check out the attached flyers for upcoming social events!
