Joy Not Happiness

In Sunday's New York Times I read this wonderful essay about quiet and stillness by Pico Iyer. Perfect for everyone you know especially friends in recovery. It reminded me of my friend Bridgid's saying, "Feelings can't hit a moving target."

Sit still; go for stillness and not action; do less not more; seek joy not happiness.

Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html

The Short Version

I ate, I drank, I shopped, I “dated”, I worried, obsessed and I began to recover. All the addictions were and are about not feeling; trying to fill that hole inside. And what is that? I think it’s this:

Someone, somewhere, a long time ago wounded me. The fear it left in me remains as anxiety and a desire to seek and then control love, and as a blind spot to the love that is all around me.

Out of the Woods and Into More Feelings

As I approach my anniversary I’m thinking about why I started this blog and this book. When I was ten years sober I realized that there were some things that were different or new in the ways I lived my sober life. When I talked with other women who had ten-plus years, I heard similar observations and questions.

For most of us the raw pain of early days was past but new kinds of pain or “strong emotion” emerged. When alcohol was put down and step work was moving along we began to see the other ways that we tried to stop feeling. Most of us had done at least one version of transferring addictions. Food, shopping, relationships, work, sugar, worry, exercise, TV, and on and on.

So this week it hit me –as I lived through some yucky feelings of jealousy, resentment and shame—that in some ways recovery gets harder. There are fewer “medicators” or distractions. More self-awareness means there is a shorter period of time in which I can indulge in a belief that “they” are my problem. In our early recovery days we heard about how uncomfortable it is to have “A head full of AA and a belly full of beer”. Ditto that with having a head full of AA and a heart full of resentment. You don’t even get to indulge in the fun part before the AA head says, “Uh huh, and your part is…?” Or “Oh might this be a projection?” Or “How nice of you who claims to be a spiritual person.”. Yes, yuck.

And while I don’t think to have a drink I might think a new sweater, some candy or another workshop will fix me up, but then I remember that I know the false solution each of those represents and “Sit still and Feel” becomes the only possible—uncomfortable—solution.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m grateful beyond belief for these years of sober life but sometimes I want some polka dot band-aids and red licorice and the cashmere comfort of unawareness.

Act as If--Again

It’s so frequently said, so obvious and so proven. But sometimes so hard to do.

Aristotle said, “We acquire virtues by first having put them into action.” A whole bunch of years later Timothy Wilson at the Universality of Virginia said, “One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change precedes changes in attitude and feelings.”

Note to me: Stop waiting to feel like it. Don’t wait to feel like writing; don’t wait to feel like doing yoga, meditating or dancing. And most of all: Don’t wait to feel loving;

Faith: What is it Good For?

Here is a gem of an insight I picked up today from Brene Brown’s blog—(I’m loving this woman—her TED talk on authenticity and now her blog too). But here is what I read this morning and it hit home so hard and so well:

She writes, "As a lover of all things certain, I wanted faith to work like an epidural; to numb the pain of vulnerability. As it turned out, my faith ended up being more like a midwife - a nurturing partner who leans into the discomfort with me and whispers "push" and "breathe."


I don’t know about you but I have been  trying to use faith as an epidural, thinking, “Come on God take this feeling, take this fear.” And thinking there was something wrong with my faith if I still felt fear, anger, disappointment etc. Chastising myself with the idea that if my faith was stronger I’d be all that peace that passeth understanding, blissed out and calm in a crisis. Well, duh, yeah I was thinking I could use faith as a drug.

But Brown’s insight and wise phrasing—not an epidural but a midwife. It’s a whole new way of thinking about faith and the value of faith and the investment in my spiritual life.

Feel Your Feelings?

A friend sent me this poem by Rumi. To live in this way that welcomes all feelings seems ridiculously courageous—but I aspire to the ridiculous. Enjoy!

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Act the Way I Want to Feel

We owe much to the philosopher William James. It was his book, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” that was critically important to Bill Wilson’s sobriety. James’s book was one of the texts that early AA members read and studied before they wrote our AA literature.

Ideas from William James permeate the Big Book and 12 step thinking and language. For example, James wrote: “Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” Or as we now say:

“Act as if”. And, “Fake it till you make it.” Or, as I am reminding myself this week, “Act the way I want to feel.”

Feelings Ego and Shame

I’m changing jobs. This week the new person arrived who will take my place. She’s wonderful. I’m the one that chose her. But, alas, those reasonable facts did not save me from my baby ego. I was caught off guard by, yes, feelings. Yeah, hum along, “feeeelings, whoa, whoa, whoa feeeelings…”

All of a sudden I was feeling bad because of the comparisons I was making: the staff like her better, volunteers too and she’s smarter, nicer, knows a lot more, even prettier. (Hey, these are Junior High emotions so why not?)

But that’s not the worst of it. Yeah, all that baby girl ego, but the worst of it was that I thought I was alone. I thought that having these feelings was some weak part of me, some unsober part of me, some “What a failure in recovery” part of me.

So I began to, sort of, kind of, tell people what I was feeling and people I spoke to all said, “Oh yeah, of course, I totally get it”. And then they told me stories about their job change and all very similar feelings that they had. These were people in recovery and people NOT in recovery. Men, women, managers, teachers, CEO’s.

So it’s not the feelings; it’s the shame about the feelings. The worst of this was not that I felt sad and insecure and displaced but that I felt so much shame for having those feelings! It was the shame that was my undoing.

This is, I think, why it’s so important to tell someone—some safe person—what is going on in our heads. Because it turns out that human beings—very healthy human beings --have all of these feelings. But I am still learning that.

Uncomfortable Feelings

Today I’m remembering something that my first sponsor used to say to me when I would tell her how hard it was to go through my day with all kinds of uncomfortable feelings coursing through me.

She’d say, “Yes, those are very uncomfortable feelings, and they are simply that:

Feelings, and uncomfortable.

Learning and Re-learning

I am reminded that we learn in spiraling circles. We make progress and move forward but we also reach back into territory or lessons we’ve learned before. Maybe these are refresher courses? Or maybe they are new levels of the same lesson.

Today my new-old lesson is this: Tell someone. Tell someone how I feel and what is bothering me.

In early recovery this was a big one and something I had to practice daily. That’s why we learned to call our sponsor or another woman in recovery. To say, “This is what happened today and this is how I feel, or this is how I think I feel”. And sure enough that small step will start the shift of thinking/feeling/healing.

Further into recovery I sometimes forget that and I think that I can figure out my own feelings or that I am supposed to. But no, the sorting and discernment happens when I tell someone.

What does change is who I tell. Today I have many friends in recovery and many friends who are not in recovery but who happen to be more-or-less sane. So I can also talk with them. Or talk to my partner! Now there’s a wild idea: tell my partner what I feel. Which also allows me to be known by him, and me to know him, and it creates-- you guessed it—intimacy.

Ok, relearning underway.

What lesson from early recovery are you relearning this week?

Uncomfortable Feelings

There are certain lessons or themes that repeat in our recovery. Some apply to all of us and then we each have our favorites. Sometimes we call them issues or character defects. They are aspects of our best and worst selves.

Here is one I come back to again and again:

Healing lies on the other side of uncomfortable feelings—and going through unmedicated. Feeling these feelings is the way to get to the other side.

I know this, I believe this but when I am scared, mad, sad, jealous or more likely when I am those things but don’t know it yet then a cookie or a plate of cookies works like a charm. OK, it’s not a drink today but still. If I want to get to the “other side’ of a big issue I need to go through unmedicated.

Yeah.

Feelings

We were talking about how we feel and someone says, “I have all these feelings and I guess that’s how I know I’m an alcoholic”. Someone else says, “I was feeling OK and then I started to feel sad and then I didn’t know why and I got upset because I didn’t know why and then I got mad at myself.” Then another person says, “We are alcoholics, that’s why we have all these feelings.”

I don’t think any of that is true. These feelings that all of us have are not about being alcoholics. They are about being human. The alcoholic part is thinking that we shouldn’t have feelings. Everyone has feelings and has feelings that shift and change for unknown reasons. We alcoholics make that into something more because we think we are not supposed to have feelings or feelings that change or feelings that don’t make sense to us. But all of that is just being human. The real symptom of alcoholism is that we fight that.