"You were not meant for pleasure, you were meant for joy." Wishing everyone a joyous and sober holiday season....
I am continually reminded of how good life can be, not perfect, but pretty cool. I am grateful that depression (oh, lord, was I depressed when I was drinking) not only has an end, but need not be recurrent.
I shudder to think about how insane I was, believing I was deep . Now, I'm just another carrot in the patch. And humbled daily. BG
That is a very important point. At some point, most of us cut ourselves off from our feelings, due to some very painful stuff in our life, most likely during childhood. Unfortunately we thought that we were only throwing out the fear, pain, shame ect.. (negative feelings) but it's a package deal and we threw out the good feelings with the bad (happiness, contentment, joy, love, peace, serenity, hope, faith...).
All of those feelings come from inside, and we began to try to replace them with outer stimuli: People, places, things, events, substances, and triggered emotions that would release strong chemicals inside our bodies: addreneline, endorphins, dopemine that would Make us Feel. We also substituted pleasure for happiness. Pleasure is a temporary feeling that we get from an experience with a person, place, thing, or event. We thought that if we could string enough pleasurable experiences together, that it would pass for continuous happiness, but all we got was a roller coaster of elation and depression and we set up for multiple addictions. We also tried to derive our "happiness" from being with other people and using them to validate our feelings, when all we were doing was mirroring them.
This set us to become chameleons who were very easily influenced by others (Codependency). This is a double edged sword where not only does the addict expect others to make him/her feel but they also expect others to feel the same way they do. The problem with that, say that your are a Parent. You have a bad day and you're angry. You come home and the wife and kids are feeling happy, joyous, and free. This brings on a feeling of outrage and the alcoholic looks to bring the rest of the family down to their level (passing the shame, as John Bradshaw would say) which in a very very sick way, is uplifting to the alcoholic. Those people need to feel the same way that I do, in order to validate my feelings.
The "program" does address these issues in a round about way with discussion about "people pleasing" ect... but in my opinion doesn't go deep enough. Many of us get extra help with this "feelings about others vs. feeling about self" through Alannon but I found Codependents anonymous (and Acoa if your parents were alcoholic or addicts) much more effective in helping me to cut all the strings (emeshment as JB would say) tying me and my emotions to others. I am responsible for my feelings and they belong only to me. It's ok for me to feel differently than you today. I truly am in touch with all my feelings today and have to live in today to feel them.
-- Edited by StPeteDean on Sunday 13th of December 2009 09:04:08 AM
. Now, I'm just another carrot in the patch. And humbled daily. BG