Essence of Worry

I was giving a lecture this morning and I was talking about a fearless moral inventory that those doing step work do as a part of cleaning house. In the fourth step of AA, "we made a fearless searching inventory". I think one of the many benefits of doing such a step is get all that garbage off our souls so that we can really restart our lives. Many people worry about this step. Lord knows I did. What happens if I start writing down my resentments and I can't ever stop? What I face all my behaviors and find out that I am the absolute worst person the world has ever known? So typical of the alcoholic in me to think that everything about this process is only about me. My clients today were quite fixated on worrying about it, much like I had. 

I was reading something recently and in this little internet blurp, I saw the following statement, "If worrying worked, your friends would advise you to just do that....." Worry is such an interesting phenomenon.  Before I stopped drinking, I worried about EVERYTHING. Worry seems to be an attempt to control an environment. I worried about what other people are thinking about me - mainly because I need to know if they know what's really going on here. I would also worry about the past and the future. I would worry that I wasn't responsible for something in the past and then worry about how not to do the same thing in the future. Worry, worry, worry.

In the first year of sobriety, I would have to say that my level of worry didn't really decrease. I still worried about everything my monitoring program.  I worried what others would think of my addiction. I worried if I was going to be able to make it the rest of my life without drinking. I would worry about about tomorrow and if I would have to provide a UA. I would worry about pretty much every action I took in my job. 

The only thing I can think of that moved me past the bulk of the worry was going through some acceptance. Step 3 was made for worriers. "Made a decision to turn my will and life over to God (as I understand Him)". Most people see this and roll their eyes about the whole "God"-thing. I know I did. In fact, I worried about having to "give it all up". I think it is pretty common with most alcoholics and addicts - we like to control things. We are, by no means, any good at it, but we sure like to try. Back in Step 1, I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable. I don't think I really understood what Step 1 was after until I got to Step 3. See, I really understood that I was powerless over alcohol. I proved that a million time over. When I got to Step 3, I realized I didn't really believe that my life had become unmanageable. In my powerlessness over alcohol, I still had a job, owned a condo, had income/money, no legal concerns,  a boyfriend. How is that unmanageable? However, I worried about each one of these all the time. I was always on the the brink of losing it all. If I got busted for drinking at work....well, there goes the house, income, money......Get pulled over for drunk driving.....there goes the clean legal record and enter all the issues of likely losing my job over it. 

Once I finally came to acceptance and my life was actually unmanageable, this paved the way for me to look at "turning it over". As a quick note, Step 2 was a pretty quick one. I believe in God. Step 2 - Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I think I did step 2 before totally getting step 1. I believed in God. God was a way better bet than anything else as far as my recovery was concerned. Anyway, so acceptance came around about Step 1. My therapist in my early recovery used to constantly ask me: "Can you do anything about it?" If the answer was "yes", then let's look at the course of action. If the answer was "no", then it was time to let it go. I ran around after my first inpatient treatment asking everyone "how do I let it go? Please tell me! How do I let it go?" I wanted a one-step movement that would facilitate "letting go". As I worked the steps more, I realized that acceptance was going to be the only key to letting go. In addition, I needed be able to throw that problem somewhere once I accepted it. Thanks, God! He's got this one. 

Let's take a hard example in early recovery. My divorce. I had lots of intense feelings around this event in my life - disappointment, death of a dream, resentment, anger, abandonment, feeling worthless and unlovable, cheated upon, ignored, sad, depressed, anxious, worried about finances, worried about the future.....Hopefully that give you some insight into the complexity of divorced - remember I asked for the divorce. I walked into my second treatment, desperate to let this divorce go. I was 2.5 years post divorce at this point. The sad part is, I never dealt with it, I was just drinking away the pain. I kept asking in class - I want to let go of this, how did I do it? I was instructed to "accept" the divorce and all the associated feelings and let it go. Since I believe in the Steps, I was encouraged to give it all over to God. I was constantly digging a hole with all these feelings. My therapist told me to stop digging. Allowing myself to re-experiencing the same feelings every minute of every day, I will start living there. Getting outside of myself and giving it over stops the process of digging, gives me the best chance of getting to acceptance. It finally happened about a year into recovery. I just let go. I let go of the pain, I let go of the negative feelings. All of a sudden, my whole body and soul relaxed. 

My worry also decreased substantially this time as well. Around a year, I was finally able to start living in the "NOW". In the last 4 years of my drinking, I was living in the past all the time, trying to figure out how I could change it all. In the first year of recovery, I was both living in the past and future. I lived in regret of the past and in total fear of the future. In the past 2 years, I have been working on trying to stay in the present and not get myself worked up about the past or the future. Today, I would have to say I am a little worked up about the future. The things I am working on, however, are things I can take action on and I am doing that. I am still reminding myself to come back and live in the present. It is so true, living in the past or the future just makes me miss all that is going on right here, right now. 

In regards to Step work, I worried the most about Step 8 & 9 - the steps of amends. I was so worried who I was going to have make amends to and how I was going to do that. Was I going to have to go back and say "I'm sorry" to people I don't really feel like saying that too? So, meanwhile, I am worrying about all of this, I am not at all focused on Step 3 - give it over. Just GIVE-IT-OVER. Can I do anything about it? No, not right now. Then just give it over to God. Is there anything I can do about it at some point? Yes and I will seek guidance when that time comes. Even before I started LOOKING at getting sober, I had decided I was too worried about the God aspect of the steps, Step 1 - I didn't want to admit anything and about the amends steps. So, even before I was looking at Step one, I was already concerned with steps 4-9. I don't believe that I am very unique  in my experience. The alcoholic mind will do just about anything to save the alcohol and abandon recovery. Worrying about step 8 when I haven't even considered step 1 is the perfect way to get myself overloaded and overly concerned. Oh, alcoholic mind, you are something else. 

When I talk to people who have relapsed after long periods of sobriety, one of the universal comments I hear attests to the essence of worry. People will talk about not going to meetings (where we are reminded all the time to give it over), taking control back and attempting to control life. When a person starts to take control back, it is so overwhelming. Think of all the little things in life that we can't control. I can't control the stoplights, the person driving in front of me, the weather, the time the mail comes, someone else's decisions......As alcoholics, when we start down the path of relapse, one of the first things we tend to do is try to control all of these things. We get heated about the red light, we are honking and screaming about the driver ahead, cursing God because its raining, acting annoyed at the mailman for coming at a different time and complaining about consistency, offering excessive amount of advice to a friend trying to convince them to change. Instead of letting go and keeping an open mind, the mind turns inward. Instead of looking at life from a worldly position, the mind focuses on how the world is attempting to screw me and only me. Yanking that control back (remember - I commented earlier, addicts and alcoholics are poor at this...) is a recipe for total disaster and leads right back to the bottle. We get a case of the "F-its" and decide that there is not one positive thing left in the world, so I will just drink. When people relapse, that is why the shame and guilt is so overpowering. It's a selfish decision and deep down, when it happens we know that what we are doing is totally selfish. There are 1.5 million other beverage options and all I am doing is focusing on the 1 that I can't have. 

Anyway, I have had some worry in my life recently. I am working diligently to turn it over and make some changes in my life where I can. I am using some of the worry to help continue my motivation to continue to working on some projects that I started a few months ago. When I start to complain in my mind about job related things, I always remind myself - THIS, yes, this I can change if I want to. Not really on the job hunt so to speak, just working on some other angles to help myself. 

Hope all is well out there!
Julie

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