Hello my friends!
Welcome to another week of Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition :)
This week I have a two-fold message for yah, first of all, you know it’s hot in NYC when the subway platform is cooler than the subway car…and while that statement may seem like it has nothing to do with sobriety let me explain to you why it does.
Some may be familiar with the acronym H.A.L.T and for those who may not be familiar HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired.
Well let’s replace that first H with Hot, or maybe add an extra H if you’re hungry too (like me) add some of the A for angry, T for tired and I’m going to remove the L for lonely for myself but feel free to add in should you really like to paint the picture here.
Now let’s add a packed subway and everyone around you suddenly forgetting how to walk and/or how to navigate a crowd.
I’m supposed to be patient?? And tolerant right now?? And be present and have compassion for the people around me??
How the f*** am I supposed to do that….is what I say to myself at first but I’m not responsible for my first thought now am I. I am however, responsible for all of the thoughts that come after.
And you know what, what comes after is gratitude.
I’m grateful I can actually feel my frustration and not numb it with booze and drugs. I am grateful I can get out of the heat and into my air conditioned apartment. I am grateful I have the money to order food to eat or maybe I’ll stop at the grocery store to avoid Uber eats fees but at least I have the luxury of having that as an option. I’m grateful I can coherently get on and off the subway and not just wake up the next day wondering how the hell I got home. I’m grateful that I can take the second to pause, and not loose my mind on people who are just as hot and irritated as me. I’m grateful to know there is a solution, for being patient, tolerant and compassionate.
This brings us to the second part of the two-fold message, as I’m nearing eight months of sobriety I struggle with feeling like I “should” be in a different/better place. I shouldn’t be so initially frustrated by the subway, or want to hip check slow walkers on the street. But I’m learning that the real growth is being able to stop (H.A.L.T.) when those first thoughts come and pivot them. My father is a psychologist and he’s always saying that there are literal grooves in my brain that I need to re-wire. Three months ago that seemed like an impossible task but today, more and more things that I learned in my first 90 days are starting to click.
With that, over the next few weeks I’d love to start sharing with you some of the ways I felt and things I experienced in my first 90 days. What I learned, how it’s starting to click for me now and hopefully I can help anyone who is counting days. Because it’s not easy but it’s so worth it (especially when you’re on a hot subway car…practice these principles in all our affairs right?)
With so much love,
Jane
I hope everyone enjoys! Always here to chat and am happy to help anything :)
"My father is a psychologist and he’s always saying that there are literal grooves in my brain that I need to re-wire."
Rewiring is a great metaphor. If you have ever had headphones with a weak wire that you had to fiddle with or lose the sound in one ear while the other one blasted away, you have the basic idea. If you *don’t* rewire your brain, all the “clicks” you felt in your first 90-days will be weakly transmitted, while all your old ways of feeling/thinking/behaving will blast in like broadband cable.
You mission (lifetime, but especially during that critical first year), needs to be to counter the signals from your former life, instantly and firmly, no negotiations over “a couple.” When you negotiate you are enhancing the old signals and drowning out the new and if you give in, it reinforces the negative signals, big time. After successfully repelling the unwelcome “Do it and do it right now!” feeling and thoughts, instantly congratulate yourself for a useful response to reinforce the positive and drown out the old signals.
“Neurons (grooves) that ‘fire’ together, wire together” and “Neurons that do not ‘fire’ together start to unwire.”
I intended to let you know that I get a kick out of your little “asides” (hip checking the slow walkers…) and something from the week before to the effect of “I thought I was handling it well…”
“…hopefully I can help anyone who is counting days.”
I counted days until I hit 1000. At 92 days I had a powerful urge that I was on the verge of giving into, but as a numbers freak, I thought, “Okay, I will! In eight more days, I’ll hit 100 and then by God I’m going to drink!” A couple hours later, I thought, “WTF is the matter with you? Every morning when you wake up well and well rested, you are so happy that you no longer wake up, ‘sick and tired,’ vow to not do that again after work, then do that again.”
Repeat as not only unnecessary, but contrary to you own best interests. I *hate* being sick! And…I’m not crazy about being tired, either.
I could have responded to nearly every sentence, but I better organize and post it on Merlin’s sparsely populated Newsletter.