Self-Pity Machine

Wow! How can it be that I haven't posted a blog entry in over two months! Time is flying by with lots of changes to this point and a few bigger ones coming up. In the next 8 days, I will be moving to a new location. My commute is very long right now and I had to make a decision about leaving my current place, which I love. After much searching, I located an apartment that will cut my commute in half for which I am more than grateful. I started working a compressed work week so I work 2-10 hour days, 1-12 hour day and 1-8 hour day; throw on 2+ hours of commuting....it's a tiring week, every week.

Since I had the scare of losing this job back in late February, I have had a lot of changes in my job. In my opinion, all positive changes. I needed to change some of my original assignments and trade them for others. At first, I was a little concerned about the new assignments. However, after being in my permanent schedule with my assignments for several weeks now, I have been really content. I have some really exciting projects in process with my favorite part of the job -- prevention. Some days, I still feel like I barely have a clue what I am doing, but I keep moving forward. As I have mentioned before, I have a great group of coworkers that make all these transitions smooth and also let me vent my self-consciousness from time to time so I can get over myself.  :)

As I was packing today, I ran across a folder of information about the monitoring program I was on. It was the agreement I signed on August 13th, 2010. I read through my agreement and can still vividly remember the first time I got this packet and read these words. When I read what was expected of me.....a work site monitor, random UAs, treatment, counseling, psychiatry visits, a PCP, one designated pharmacy, over the counter medication restrictions, attend 2 AA meetings a week, get a sponsor and send in quarterly reports from all of the above for a term of no less than 36 months. I freaked out. I checked into detox on August 8th, 2010 and was told "there are two ways out of here, this program or we make an official complaint to the Board of Nursing that you are practicing as an impaired nurse." On August 13th, I almost considered letting this go to the Board. What the hell? Who could possibly do this?

Self-pity is the psychological state of mind of an individual in perceived adverse situations who has not accepted the situation and does not have the confidence nor competence to cope with it. It is characterized by a person's belief that he or she is the victim of unfortunate circumstances or events and is therefore deserving of condolence. Self-pity is generally regarded as a negative emotion in that it does not generally help deal with adverse situations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-pity)

I was so full of self-pity at that time of my life. Self-pity is so strong in addiction. It's like addiction's way of throwing gasoline on a fire. While I did ask "why me?" a lot, my self pity was really wrapped up in all the ways that I failed everyone else. My focus became my perception of what a loser I was and therefore, I got to drink. I just could not cope with my life as it was, I just needed to be able to run away. I was given a couple of assignments about self pity in my first treatment. Boy, those assignments struck a nerve with me. "Who are you to judge me?" "I should feel bad about this or about that. Why can't I feel bad about that?" Looking back on that treatment experience now, it was so clear how strong that addiction voice was back then. My brain had enough self pity/gasoline in the reserves to perpetuate my addiction for several more years. 

In the above definition, what caught my eye was the "deserving of condolence". I loved that about self-pity back in the day. "Look at how horrible this all is!" When I would exaggerate or flat out lie about details of my life, I was looking to get that reaction from people. Every time I was able to get someone wrapped up in all my drama, the more justified I felt about continuing on with exactly what I was  doing. Half the time, I was like a woman possessed! The more of a reaction I would get some others, the bigger the reaction I would try to get the next time. It fed my ego and, in my sick mind, continued to justify the lifestyle I was living. 

When I was alone with nobody to talk to, I would turn that self-pity to God. If God is so good, why would God let people suffer like this? Can't He see me crying? Can't he see how depressed I am? Can't God just make it all stop? I was very resentful of any idea of a God or Higher Power. I refused AA until my first treatment because the word "God" was in one of those steps. Heck, no, I talked with Him once and it didn't go my way. 

One of my tattoos says "Only God will". That is all. Nothing more, nothing less. People ask me a lot of the time, "'Only God will' what?" My response is "how ever you want to finish it, I guess." For me, I like to leave a blank space there. Only God will keep me sober. Only God will direct my life. Only God will save me from myself. Only God will keep positivity in my life. In my world of recovery, I had to surrender to the fact that me in the driver's side on this life is not a good thing. Any time I have tried to take back control, my life went into the ditch. Once I stopped fighting all the time, I finally got some peace. My mind stopped racing all the time. I started to find purpose and became inspired to talk about my addiction. I just wish recovery for everyone suffering from addiction or whatever is hurting them. 

Self-pity is one of those things in my life that is a big warning sign for me. I talked in a past blog about the phases of relapse. The emotional relapse, the mental relapse and the physical relapse. In a quick review, the emotional relapse is the start of changing recovery based activities. Stop going to meetings, stop practicing mindfulness techniques or whatever it is that supports one's recovery. The mental relapse is the time of thinking about relapsing. Justifying use, becoming unwilling to work through what life is throwing at me. The physical relapse is the picking up of the drug again and using excessively. Self-pity falls into that emotional relapse realm for me. It leads me quicking into a mental relapse. 

When I thought I was losing my job, I wrote about how I was on the edge of a physical relapse. I really got into self-pity mode. "Why can't I have what I want? -- I really like this job, there is nothing else out there for me." Within a really short period of time, I was in the mental relapse phase for sure. I was planning, no doubt about that. Almost 5 years of recovery under my belt and I was thinking that I deserved to drink because I am mad. I get to drink because people would expect a relapse if I lost it. Fortunately, I was also starting to prepare for that. While my addicted mind was in full force, I was also contemplating what that choice would mean for me. Say bye to being an addictions counselor. Say bye to any job in this field for two years. Welcome back to HPSP monitoring if I want to go back to practice in nursing. I am fortunate enough that those consequences are far too great for me. 

The reason I was thinking about self-pity was because of the sermon at church last night. The pastor asked what would we want to do if we knew that we only had a few more hours to live. While this seems pretty morbid, he was talking about it in the context of Jesus' last hours before his death. As the question pertains to me, of course, I would want to be surrounded by my family and close friends. The pastor then commented that Jesus' goal was to be remembered. That struck me. I would want to be remembered as well. There was an episode of Intervention in which a severely chronic alcohol man got sober and was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He died 100+ days later. When they interviewed the family (his kids in particular) after his death, they had this tremendous pride in saying "he died sober." I had a flashback of that episode during church. I would want to be remembered like that. I would want people to say "yep, she was sober." I wouldn't want them to remember me in any kind of self-pity mode. Alas, I am not in a place of self-pity today. I will work to be sure I am not in self-pity mode tomorrow. I am so fortunate and so lucky to be where I am today. I still have big dreams for the future, doing what I do on an even larger scale; however, for now, I just look at my "Only God will" tattoo and remind myself that only God will provide for me what I need to be happy.

Ahhh...it feels good to write again. I hope to be back very very soon.

Peace,

J

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