Self-Care Once A Day Keeps The Demons At Bay

This Week on Sober Diary

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I am so grateful to be sober today. I’m grateful for a really nice day yesterday, for a great meeting, for service and for being able to help others. I’m grateful for a sunny morning this morning, for learning how to be more present, for coffee, conversations with my sponsor, a new episode of Ted Lasso, for my journals and that tomorrow is Friday.

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Good morning, friends!

Happy Thursday :) As always, I hope everyone has been having a wonderful week and is gearing up for the weekend.

On Monday, I shared with you all about working out my shit, vision boards and this specific journal prompt about grudges I’ve been holding again myself. Since then, I’ve also started reading The Fifth Agreement and I feel like I’m on this renewed/refreshed spiritual journal in which I don’t really know what I’m doing I’m kind of just following my intuition and gut.  

But what I really want to talk about today is that super specific journal prompt. I recently discovered this idea called “shadow work”. Now I honestly know very little about this except its all-over social media, it was developed by Carl Jung so emphasis on the renewed spiritual journey here, and the journal prompts are really fucking good.

For example, here is one of the prompts I did on Tuesday:

Do I place too much of my personal value on my level of productivity? What words or feelings do I associate with “rest” “work” “success” and “failure”?

Absolutely

Rest = A reward

Work = Giving 110% all of the time, always working hard

Success = The goal/good

Failure = Bad/ The wort outcome

My conception of hard work, of my own personal value, what it means to be successful, and the ramifications of failing are so skewed. Right down to the fact that I need to text my sponsor to remind me that self-care, changing into sweatpants lighting a candle, doing some journaling, and reading, is how you refill your cup. Not being lazy. AND you can do those things, or similar things every day and that still does not mean you are lazy or not working hard enough.

The way that I work, is a huge hurdle that I am working on getting over, and there is a lot of stuff there. A lot of anger and resentment. My body has been physically reacting to work this week, so much anxiety, racing heart, shaking, all of the things.

But would anyone like to hear the irony in all of this – I have a friend who has been leaning on me for guidance as they try to navigate entering the same industry, I am in. And I have been here to try and help them not make the same mistakes I did, set boundaries early, don’t sell yourself short, speak up and use your voice.

And that my friends, is HP to me. Which I honestly haven’t thought about until I started writing today. With all the anger and resentment and trauma that I have, I can still help someone else.

So, like I said on Monday – my default is to stand in my own way. But I really believe HP is talking back to me every time I say, “please help me find my way”. I believe that if I keep following this little path that I’m on, it will lead me in the right direction, and everything will eventually feel clear.

But it all starts with practicing self-care at least once a day ;)

xx

Jane