Emotional Literacy

There are a lot of new things to learn in early recovery. For one, my emotions were back, and I had to learn to deal with them. In looking back at that time, my biggest hurdle was actually identifying what I was feeling. Everything felt just short of rage all the time. I told myself many times, "if I am going to feel like this, I should just drink. This is just as bad." I was sad, mad, angry, numb - all at the same time. It was like 15 years of emotion finally got unearthed when I stopped drinking. 

As I was working through treatment, again, we had this article about anger as a secondary emotion. That is just a fancy way of saying there is another emotion present; all I know is anger, so that is what I display. I got this big long list of emotions, and I was supposed to identify which emotions I really was feeling when I would have an episode of anger. I didn't want to take my counselor's word for it that I couldn't identify how I was feeling. "Listen, I am mad. That is what I am mad about. Pissed. Nothing else, just that." For a person that is as stubborn as me when it comes to emotions, even the exercise of identifying them was intrusive. 

It wasn't until I hit the first year sober that I was really willing to look at much. My survival mechanism for the first year was going to meetings and being mad at meetings for being put into a monitoring program that made me have to think about more than just myself and drinking. Mad, mad, mad. I sat in first step meetings for over a year, trying to get the first step figured out. I can't control my alcohol use - got that. Life is not going very well for you......well, smartypants, it doesn't feel so great sober either, so maybe the drunk like wasn't so bad after all. Then 365 days in, the wall came down. I don't know what I was doing differently or what happened. I just remember feeling like I could breathe for the first time since I was in college. The rage calmed. The testy moods seem to vanish on that day. Maybe the wall just finally collapsed? Or maybe my brain made a new connection that I was empowered to anything in this I wanted, except drink. Think of all the possibilities!

I returned to DBT after that moment and decided I was ready to look at all the emotional stuff. The two emotions that came up most frequently were disappointment and worry. I carried a lot of worry with me about everything. I believe that to be part of my anxiety disorder and nervousness can get out of hand for me if I am not paying close attention. Disappointment is what surprised me the most. I was in a long-term relationship for the first couple of years of my sobriety. In the final six months of that relationship, I was chronically disappointed. I had changed. I had started going back to school. I began to meet up with people again. I was trying to rebuild my life. His life had so much drama and chaos. I tried to wait calmly in the background, I tried to fix things, I would worry, etc. etc. I was just never a priority in his life the way I had made him a priority in mine. 

When I have experienced anger in the past two years, I feel I was trying to relay to the world that I was feeling traumatized, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, and/or frazzled. Between the atmosphere of the job, the job, and my horrific lack of personal life, all I could feel was angry and upset. I could go "0 to raging" in a matter of minutes. That is not the way I want to live, and I do kick myself on the occasion that I let it go for as long as I did. I also was feeling guilt. If I did leave, what about these amazing people I leave behind? What would happen to the people I care for? My desire and nature to care for others can easily overwhelm my personal emotions. Sadly, it turned into beating myself up for not being able to hack it. 

The anger and rage is my life is fairly quiet these days. I still think disappointment is an emotion that I have learned to identify easier. Because that is a vulnerable emotion, I would rather be mad and angry. Being furious and angry makes me feel more powerful than feeling sad does. It's an Achille's heel of mine. The emotion of being disappointed is tied to my previous entry about expectations. I have been told by both professionals and friends that I have a hyper-independence issue. In some of my most vulnerable times, some people walked away. Instead of mourning the loss of the relationship and attempt to understand my role in things, I will walk away from almost all of my relationships (family excluded in this conversation -- they are my rock). I would vanish them from my life, never to be spoken of again. Deleted anything related to them - email address, phone numbers, messages, social media connection. Gone. Not only do I react as if I was abandoned, I see it as a betrayal.

So, this hyper-independence thing. I get it. It's the attitude of "well if you want it done right, do it yourself" gone extreme. I literally feel guilty when someone does something for me. "I can do it myself; it's no problem." I handle it all on my own. I will figure it out. I, then, end up disappointing myself because I keep people at such a distance. I crave the closeness, but I refuse to engage in it because I believe I am saving myself from the inevitable heartbreak or disappointment. If I get in a one-sided friendship and that person vanishes the minute I have an issue I would like to talk about, it will be months before I will speak with anyone about anything. It further validates my ultimate worry - I wasn't good enough to get the help I needed, and people will always betray me. I no longer trust myself to determine who is good and who is not. So, I participate in relationships where the other knows little about me. I  know just about everything in their lives. Much of which is by my own doing. 

People tend to think that independent people are super strong and courageous. I wonder how many of us really struggle with independence consuming everything. I have become so rigid in my independence that I will rarely allow people into my home. I will struggle at times to make decisions because I lack trust in the input I solicit, or I don't reach out at all. It's a strange place to me. I have set myself up in such a manner that I expect myself to do everything by myself. I have been yelled at on more than one occasion for driving myself to the emergency room, for not reaching out when things were going south, and not telling others around me that I am having a bad day. I am resourceful and can get things done, no doubt. I just have trouble allowing myself to be dependent on others. Especially when I believe that these actions would unequivocally change someone else's opinion of me. I have been round and round with my therapist on this one. Intellectually, I get it. If someone asked for my help, I am honored and happy to help. If I ask for help, I failed in some way that I couldn't figure out how to do it on my own. 

As I said in my previous blog, I hate not writing for weeks on end. These are the thoughts that just roll around my head. Writing gets these thoughts out of my head and in a place to help me make sense of my own perspective. I find it strange that my "safe space," so to speak, to be vulnerable and real is here. It was about this time last year when my blog posts were given to my supervisor as I was processing my next steps in regards to my career. In a vulnerable moment, my words were used against me. In that moment, I snatched back the power and said, "Yup, you know what? Let's be real. I am unhappy. I hate this career path. I have a career issue not a job issue. Something has to change." In a way, when people mention to me that they read this, I feel empowered in those moments too. Like, hey, you're not treating me any differently. You still think I am OK. So, maybe this blog is not so much a "safe space" as it is an experimental place for me to see if I can let my guard down without the world stopping. So far, so good. This blog will turn eight years old in November. Hopefully, many more years of experimenting ahead! Here's to healing!

​J