Filling Up My Journal, Missing a Meeting, and in a Rut

 

My journal is full.

And I need a new one really REALLY bad.

Journaling is so important to recovery progress.  I can attest that my thinking is broadened and deepened when I am writing things down as I ponder spiritually about things.  So with the steps, I always write down my thoughts as they come.  Re-read my thoughts, and write down more thoughts.  Thus, I fill up my journals.

Using the little places in the Recovery book works too but for me there isn't enough space.  I need lots more space!

My husband?  He writes one sentence in response to each question and can't think of anything else, moves on, and then gets frustrated because he isn't really making progress.  That's because you really have to deeply think about your personal application for each question.  Don't just give the Sunday School answer to the questions.  Apply them to your life, your past, your present, your everyday habits.

I also missed group this week.  *sobs*  I really need to learn how to be more assertive!

So I have Relief Society tonight, and so I wasn't going to go to my usual Support Group meeting.  Instead I was going to drive yesterday to attend the Addiction Support Group a little farther away.  But I had a visitor over yesterday and when the time came that I needed to go or choose to miss, I wasn't assertive enough to tell my visitor it was time to go home.  Instead I let her stay for pizza with my family.  This little visitor of mine is a young girl and her mom texted me asking if she could come home but I didn't read the text until an HOUR later!!!  She had texted me just before I had decided I would miss the meeting.  If I had read the text it would have given me an excuse to send her home right away and get a move on to my meeting!  But no.

But with or without that text I should have been assertive enough to say I had a place to be.  This morning I wake up regretting that decision and missing out on that meeting.  Maybe I'll call and find out from my sponsor how the meeting went last night.  I know it isn't the same.

Part of me wants to just go to tonights meeting and miss Relief Society, but I have already told others I am going to be there.

Again, though, this is my excuse: "Someone else needs/wants me somewhere else."

Why do I always give in to what I feel others expect from me?  I honestly believe people would not be offended if I were to stand up and do what I need for ME!  Because it's the healthy thing to do.  I can't only do what other people want me to do all the time.

I really must learn how to do what's best for me sometimes.

I've read about this before.

"When people with a compulsive disorder do whatever it is they are compelled to do, they are not saying they don't love you - they are saying they don't love themselves." Codependent No More by Melody Beattie

Then added to that by Melody's The Language of Letting Go, "Yes, at times we need to be firm, assertive: ...when we need to convince others and ourselves we have rights. ...Help me find the balance between assertive action taken in my own best interests, and love for others.  Help me understand that at times those two ideas are one.  Help me find the right path for me."

I read that only a few days ago and now here I am.

I feel like my lesser addiction, to media, is also giving me a run for my money.  I've given in and sat around to watch some dumb tv show that is pointless instead of doing more important things.  And of course I don't feel any better.  If anything I feel worse because I just wasted that time being idol and lazy.  It puts me in a rut because then I don't feel the enthusiasm to do anything and the cycle just begins again.  More media.  More wasted time.  More guilt and self-loathing.  More discontent.  More media.

I have to break the cycle and choose to do something better instead of turning again to media.

I think maybe I just need to choose a big project to tackle and focus on to win back my productivity.

I DID send out a couple letters for my Step 9, to make reconciliation to a couple people.  That felt pretty good.  I'm hoping things will go well with that.  But, since I've done that I really need to get on my Step 10 now.  Which will probably boost my Daily Accountability.  Which is what I need right now, when it comes to this rut I've gotten myself into.  Daily Accountability will help me to go moment by moment again and choose the best things and not just the good or ok things for me to be doing.  Priorities.

But I need a new journal!

Another Trusted Person

 

In step 5 it reads:

"We also selected another trusted person to whom we could disclose the exact nature of our wrongs.  We tried to select someone who had gone through steps 4 and 5 and who was well-grounded in the gospel.  We began the meeting with prayer to invite the Spirit, and then we read our inventories aloud.  The individuals who listened to our inventories often helped us see lingering areas of self-deception.  They helped us put our lives into perspective and avoid exaggerating or minimizing our accountability...We started to understand our tendencies..."

I have done it.

Over this past week, I had a conflict planned for the usual time I attend PASG meetings.  Because of this, I decided it was an opportunity for me to attend the woman's group for addicts.  I usually attend the support group for loved ones of the addict, but I knew I needed to attend a group for actual addicts at some point because of my specific situation.  However, it was a little drive to get to the meetings.  There aren't as many of these available.

So I did.  I went to the meeting the day before my usual time, and although it was a little different and I felt sort of out of place, I know it was what I needed to do and where I needed to be.  I plan to attend this meeting on occasion, because it offers up a different perspective that I really need.

At this meeting, I met a new Facilitator who I felt I could share my inventory with.  By this weekend, I had set up a time and on Saturday I was able to meet with her and lay it all out.  It took a little over three hours.  But it felt so good to just let out everything I wished I could say out loud to somebody and have them listen reflectively.  I could have tried to do this with my husband but I'm sure at some point his eyes might have glazed over.

I feel so much better after having this experience.  Now I feel like I truly have been able to be completely honest about everything.  I was able to also pin-point how my addictions to media or fantasy are also correlated with my addiction to self gratification and I hadn't made that connection yet.  I also have a new sense of determination to tackle my media addiction...right now I'm completely overcome by watching Vampire Diaries.  At least it's only once a week, but I know that when I watch it, I get a high and have to come back to reality...and that's where the problem really is in that.

So here I am, willing and able to move forward to Step 6.  Finally!

Being Imperfect

 
I didn't go to the meeting last night because I had to let my husband go by himself since we didn't have a babysitter again, and I went alone last time.  I miss it.

Support group meetings are like a breath of fresh air once a week.  Church attendance is important too, yes, but there is something extra special about attending a meeting where everyone takes off their masks and lets everyone else see the imperfections and pains and struggles, and still feel loved.  Church should be more like this.  Someday I hope the program merges into the church's regular programed system and helps people to open up and realize everybody is struggling.

There's a woman who attends my group who expressed feeling completely and utterly alone when she attends church because as she looks around it feels like she is the only one that isn't put together.  This is the terrible lie I feel everyone at church sometimes thinks they must live up to.  Especially the women (in my opinion) although the men have their masks too.  Women seem to have more to hide.  I mean, we are of course the ones expected to cover up with makeup and panty hose and modern-day corsets to hide our physical nonconformities...and then emotionally and spiritually it's even worse, because of this.  Men have the freedom to allow physical imperfection and seem to have more lee-way in their social psyche when it comes to any kind of expectation.  (Of course, they go completely the opposite direction and are expected to have the emotional capacities of snails, but that rant is for another post).

Women expect perfection in ways that are completely and utterly impossible.  But what is important to note is that most women expect this of themselves more then others, and because they expect it of themselves they feel like everyone else is  expecting it.  When, in truth, everyone else is just as worried for themselves.   No one really pays attention to judge how perfect other people are, if only to compare someone's greatest talent to one's own weaknesses, degrading oneself all over again.  I rarely could even imagine seeing someone say "Oh look, she's not a good mom because her daughter didn't get her hair in a neat ponytail for church today."

All that?  At the Addiction Recovery Support Group Meetings? Gone.

Instead, we are sitting there with the combined understanding that we all are imperfect, we all make mistakes, we all need our Savior, and that this is ok!

On top of this, we discuss our struggles and our faith, and a beautiful spirit is always there in each meeting that testifies the truth of that sentence above.

So if you are struggling with anything, be it an addiction, or just a weakness, or pain from someone else's wrongs.  Come to a meeting.  You are welcome here.

Go to the Meeting Finder to find a meeting near your area.