The person who posed the question felt she had been misled. She believed that, even after decades of recovery, some people were “still messed up and acting out their issues.” Becoming sober isn’t just about abstaining from alcohol.
Essential Mindsets For Continuous Career Growth
An alcoholic, bipolar, (mostly) asexual’s red-eye flight from hell to healthy. It might sound likely a relatively minor complaint when compared with the harms of addiction, but the truth is that boredom is one of the single greatest threats being sober sucks to many people’s sobriety. This site is not intended to provide and does not constitute medical, legal, or other professional advice. The content on Tiny Buddha is designed to support, not replace, medical or psychiatric treatment.
What to Do When Life Sucks
Acceptance of one another and each individual’s right to walk her own path is the solution. SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional. You are a mirror now, a flashlight of sobriety in a society that is laced with the judgment that it’s abnormal to abstain from alcohol. People will assume you drink and will be very curious about why you don’t have a drink in your hand when they do.
Questions With Jlin
Prevalence-induced concept change might explain why some view racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., as running amok in our society and growing worse. It is not that these problems don’t exist; it is just that we have a hard time experiencing a sense of progress because the goalposts keep moving. Our hedonic treadmill has turned into Jacob’s Ladder so that for every step forward, it feels like we are falling two steps back. In a manner of speaking, our feelings from the past would obscure our vision. For example, if my outstanding lunch from yesterday continued to give me great pleasure today, I might not realize that the questionable meal I’m eating currently is not fit for human consumption. We need our current feelings of pleasure/displeasure in the present moment to guide us toward what is good for us and away from what is bad for us.
Why Does Life Suck So Bad Sometimes? (And How to Fix It)
Of course, pondering and accepting your losses is an important step in changing your life for the better. But when you obsess over your failures, you’re not leaving room for self-improvement. Then make up your mind to tackle one of those things this week, this month, or in the next six months. Do something that scares your “I suck at life” self. If you’re the average of the people you hang out with, create a social environment that raises the average and inspires you to become the person you want to be. A medical issue could be at the root of what you’re feeling.
Ask yourself some pointed questions.
Ask any sober person whether they want to go to a cocktail party or stay in with a pack of La Croix, The Crown, and a bathrobe. I’d bet nine out of 10 of us won’t even answer, and we’ll just laugh because it’s such a ridiculous question. Sobriety doesn’t necessarily turn you into Liz Lemon, but it can give you the clarity to understand that you’ve been Liz Lemon your whole life. Thankfully, there have only been a few times when someone at the table hasn’t pointed it out on my behalf and adjusted accordingly. However, when it has happened, I have to speak up to point out that I didn’t drink and I’m not subsidizing their drinking.
- That schoolmarm part of me—that hypercritical finger-wagging part of myself that I thought was gonna keep me sober—that was actually what helped me stay drunk.
- At least you get to be present to deal with your problems in a mature way, and know when you put your head on the pillow that you (mostly) did your best.
- While sobriety is well worth the effort required to achieve it, choosing sobriety is a significant endeavor that requires courage, difficult conversations, and significant life changes.
- Check your phone’s app store for free or low-cost learning tools.
To counter all of this negativity, slow down, take a deep breath, and prioritize your mental health. Clear out all of those unhelpful emotions so you can feel more balanced[3]. When something hits you hard, don’t ignore it and hope it goes away.
Lembke says this balancing see-saw of pleasure and pain made sense in the time of early humans, when we had to constantly search for our basic needs – food, water, shelter. “It’s really an ingenious method to make sure that no matter what we do, that’s pleasurable. It doesn’t last very long and it’s followed by pain so that immediately we’re searching again,” she explains. My biggest fears in life include being in large groups of strange people, standing at parties by myself, and really just people in general. Drunk me didn’t have to worry if I was alone at a party because drunk me didn’t abide such things. Drunk me didn’t worry if she belonged, or said the right thing, or had to have small talk because drunk me just handled that. There are people for which sobriety is a deal-breaker.
What does it take to move beyond addiction—and stay there?
Today, I’m grateful for my sobriety and the sparkle it brought to my life. While I don’t do “fit spiritual condition” perfectly, I’m grateful for knowing what it takes, doing the work to get there, and for the gift of neutrality that it brings. And I’m grateful for the ability to recognize the briar patch and to know the freedom of not always lugging that shell around. We spent the better part of a year identifying the briar patch, and I learned how to be a turtle without a shell.
