Alcohol Recovery

In alcohol recovery and sobriety or even in normal situations, when you are feeling depressed, you are totally focused on yourself, maybe your shortcomings, your problems, your surroundings, whatever it may be, your thoughts are centered upon yourself. It is hard to even see that when you are feeling in a bad way. I recently went through quite a depressive slump of a week or so and I felt really crappy. One day, I was going through my emails and I came across a Tony Robbins mini video about one of his conferences and just through watching that, I literally started to think about possibilities again as opposed to being stuck in this dark moody place that I couldn’t quite get out of. Since then, I am also making an effort to think about others more and see what I can do to help in some way or be involved in something. It really helps.

When you focus on the negative or the bad, and this can happen often during alcohol recovery and sobriety then that is what you will feel. Same thing with this, if you are feeling depressed or focused on the negative aspects about your life then you will be feeling pretty bad. Once you start feeling bad it is easy to spiral into a complete state of negativity that will completely drain you. The difficult thing I find is that for the most part I am optimistic and have an upbeat attitude but every now and again, things will get the better of me and before I know how I got there, I will be feeling slightly down, occupied with negative thoughts and just generally feeling like life is a struggle. The fact that the length of my sobriety is increasing means that it is now easier to see patterns in my behavior and notice what triggers unwanted feelings.

I have noticed that big changes to my regular routines throw me. Before I gave up drinking, my life was quite chaotic really, I would go anywhere and say yes to most invitations as long as I knew I would be able to have a few drinks, life was fun and I was being carefree and living life to the fullest (or so I thought at times). But since then, I have slowed down and learned to appreciate life in a different way. I have learned that having routines are important to me, I am not rigid in my plans but I feel better when I know what is going on and I don’t have huge surprises thrown at me. I don’t go to as many outings as I used to because I don’t enjoy those type of things in the same way anymore.

A few recent examples of losing my routine structure were a few months back when I had visitors stay for about 3 weeks. I really gave up most of what I enjoy doing to ensure that we all did things together and to make sure that they had a good time. But once the trip was over, I was not only exhausted but I felt lost and that ultimately led me into the negative land where I stayed for a while and felt rather depressed. In hindsight, what I had done was give up all the newly created routines that were backing me up in my sobriety. I wasn’t working out, I wasn’t reading, I wasn’t concentrating on sharing my journey on Recovery Princess, all of those things are important to me and my sobriety and I wasn’t able to truly realize that until the more recent event that led me into depression once more. My little one was sick for a week and I literally laid down for a week with her until she was better. Once again, my routine was totally gone and after that week I felt pretty awful for a week, it was hard to get myself back on track again.

There are patterns that emerge in sobriety that help me understand my journey better. I know what sets me off,  now I know that I have to be aware of the fact that if I do not have structure around me I am prone to negative thinking and if I am not proactive in immersing myself in something relating to helping someone else then I am more than likely going to get depressed.

Life is so crazy, it is impossible to predict what every day is going to be like. But just knowing that being off my routine and not doing the things that are important to me can cause me to feel off kilter allows me to be aware and mindful of my limitations and to go easy on myself. That in itself can be enough to keep my journey on a more even keel.

If you are struggling with your alcohol recovery and sobriety, then you may want to read my post Listen To This For Inspiration it is filled with the places I visit when I am feeling down and need some good uplifting.

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Tags: alcohol recovery and sobriety, during alcohol recovery, feeling depressed, I gave up drinking, negative thoughts