SANITY
May 5, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily readerS
“One of the keys to being restored to sanity involves surrendering our need to harm ourselves or to run from our feelings.” BRBp.137
“It is not sane to have a battle with ourselves to keep feelings from surfacing. By running from our emotions, we lose out on the valuable lessons they may teach us. When we deny or stuff feelings, they continue to hide just under the surface. They become jumbled and confusing and tend to come out with the slightest trigger.
When feelings are experienced rather than denied, they lose their power. By learning to sit with our feelings and acknowledge them, we practice self-love. As we start to love ourselves more, we will want to harm ourselves less and begin to treat ourselves with genuine kindness and compassion.
But we don’t just stop the behavior of self-harm all at once. Part of the process is to surrender this need to our Higher Power, knowing that we will be shown how to love ourselves. Whether quickly or slowly, we come to have faith in the Promises of ACA.
On this day I will nurture myself by accepting my feelings as they arise, knowing they hold opportunities for me to grow and love myself more fully.”
My Experience:
How difficult this is when you have spent a lifetime controlling the narrative. I have had conversations in my head prior to interactions with people trying to anticipate all scenarios and crafting responses to those scenarios. How insane is that? Then when it didn’t go as I expected it to go, I would unleash the gladiator. In this scenario, even though I won the battle, I eventually lose the war in that the person that was the target of my wrath disengages from me that much more until some point down the road they completely disengage and I am left wondering what happened. This is insanity at its finest. I now attempt to deal with my feelings in a way that honors both me and the person that I am talking to. No inappropriate behavior on my part and no need to display anger as I now know that I too have choices for which to walk away if the person in front of me chooses not to honor me. I say try because this is a program of progress not perfection. I am getting better and feeling much saner in the process.
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