Living in the Learning

Last time I posted, I talked about sitting in my painful feelings and ended by saying I had accidentally done the right thing. Here is what happened next.

I recognized that I was feeling pretty bad and decided I needed to discuss this with my counselor (I’m going to call her Dawn – tho that isn’t her real name). So I did. She immediately identified what I was feeling and told me I had become “destabilized” and was at high risk for relapse. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but I knew I needed help, so I listened. After a long and emotional discussion, I learned some specific ideas I decided I needed to learn to live“in and with.”

First, when I feel badly about something – anything, I am not required to “fix it.” In fact, I SHOULDN’T try to fix it. That realization was huge for me. I knew I didn’t want o drink over how I felt, but I thought I had to somehow fix how I felt – so I wouldn’t feel so bad. But my wonderful counselor told me that “normal” people (whoever they are!) don’t necessarily feel that driving need to fix how they feel – even if it is bad. Huh—who knew?

Second, it isn’t necessary to know if my original thoughts were accurate or not. Turns out that knowing exactly what my husband was feeling and thinking in the first place isn’t that important. So what if he was thinking a certain way? Would knowing that have changed what I honestly wanted to do? The answer is no, not really. So the bottom line here is that I’m not required to read other people’s minds. What a relief!

And third, feelings, like cravings, come and go. They pass. And when they do, and I am calm and not experiencing the associated emotional upheaval, then that is the time to decide whether to take any action based on my original feeling. And I discovered that when the feeling passed and I was no longer sad, or angry or upset about it, I didn’t need to talk to him about it how I felt. If (when) it happens again, I can decide then whether or not to take action; or at some future point I can have a rational discussion with him.

You would think I would already know this stuff, since it seems kind of elementary. But, I having lived my whole life either numbing those uncomfortable feelings or looking for some other way to “fix” them, I simply didn’t know. To learn that I don’t have to DO anything is a huge relief.

So today, I am comfortable knowing that when I experience a painful feeling, I don’t have to take action. It is healthy to simply experience it, express it, or as a friend in treatment said –even embrace it. Maybe even challenge it – as in “BRING IT ON, BABY!” And I can live in that kind of learning. May you successfully live in God’s learning too – those teachable moments that he offers us daily. Thanks for listening.

Caro