Learning to deal with emotions in recovery

Emotions are a difficult subject in recovery because for most of us, numbing emotions was a primary reason for our drinking/using.   When we make the decision to stop and enter recovery, all the emotions we held at bay come flooding back, usually multiplied exponentially.   Picture being on a long road trip, just driving along as fast as you can, trying to get everywhere fast.  For every meal, you load up on food and drinks and keep driving, just throwing all the trash in the back seat to clean up later.  This goes on for a long, long time, until your entire back seat is piled up to the roof with trash.   And then all at once, you decide to stop and slam on the brakes.  Screeeeeech! All of the collected trash from years of driving and tossing it in the back seat comes flying up and covers you from head to toe with garbage.   Now you’re just sitting still in the front seat, with rotten food and nasty, sticky sodas dripping off of you.  This is what happens to your emotions when you stop drinking – every single unpleasant emotion you have been ignoring for years and tossing in your mental back seat gets dumped all over you, and for the first time you feel everything acutely.  All. At. Once.  It’s intense and awful and requires a significant amount of help to get through. 

What this help looks like is different for everyone.  12-step meetings were of critical importance to me, because those rooms were filled with people who all understood what I was going through.  Addiction tends to isolate us, and that little addiction voice in our heads tells us that we are unlovable, and no one will ever understand us.  And in groups of normies (non-addicts) this is sometimes true.  At the very least, trying to discuss it will make others uncomfortable.  If you try to voice your addiction and recovery woes in the school pick-up line or at the neighborhood barbeque, the reception will likely not be empathetic.  But meetings are a safe place full of understanding people in various phases of recovery who will listen, empathize, and offer assistance and advice.  

Families can be tricky, because a lot of the time they are also reeling from fallout from our addiction and need independent healing themselves.  I was fortunate that my husband was also in recovery so we could support each other while still going through our own independent healing journeys.  For him, meetings were sufficient to handle the emotional toll and start to move on.   My active addiction days were filed with ER visits, job losses, sexual assault, physical injuries, jail, and many other awful events I just couldn’t get out of my mind.  For me, the traumas I went through were too much for me to process with meetings alone, so I also enlisted the help of a therapist as well as a psychiatrist.   In the beginning, I was overwhelmed every day with flashbacks and intrusive thoughts, and every night was filled with horrific dreams from which I woke up sweaty and terrified.  

I was diagnosed with PTSD, placed on a few medications, and I began seeing a therapist who specialized in EMDR.  Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of therapy that utilizes directed eye movements while discussing the traumatic event(s).  I’m not sure of the neuroscience behind how following a little dot with your eyes works, but it does work for me.   I still have flashbacks and awful dreams, but only about once per week as opposed to all day and night.   As my therapist explained in the beginning, I still have the memories, but they do not carry the emotional gut-punch that they used to.  I am still working with my therapist for these issues, and I doubt they will ever go away completely, but therapy has given me the tools to minimize their impact on my day-to-day activities. 

Recovery helped me learn more about myself than I ever knew before, and therapy has enabled me to live with the associated emotions.   I needed both to get to a point where I could calm my fears enough to function normally, because at first, the emotional tsunami overwhelmed me to a point of paralysis.  Recovery helped me discover that I am a highly sensitive person who is ill-suited to any sort of high-pressure environment. For years, I ignored all my body’s warning signals, and I just hoped one day I would magically wake up and be someone else.   I am very adept at hiding my emotions and pretending to be someone I am not, and for a long time I considered this ability to be an asset.  I was good at acting tough and unbothered, and alcohol was my primary tool for maintaining this illusion.  However, it was this very quality that allowed me to get into situations (career, marriage) that were extremely toxic.   I equate it to being really good at pretending to be able to swim – until you find yourself in the deep end with nothing to grab on to.  I came to a point in my life where my facade was killing me, and I needed to get out immediately. Recovery helped me come to terms with the fact that I would never be cut out for the life I had worked so hard to build.  I fought for a while to keep it, but I couldn't stay sober with those influences in my life; so I finally practiced the ultimate “let it go” and let everything crumble.  I stopped practicing law, filed for bankruptcy, threw away everything I couldn’t fit in a small truck, blocked all former contacts except for family, and started over at ground zero.   This was incredibly painful, and I for many years grieving the loss of my former career, friends, lifestyle and identity was a large part of my recovery work.

What I have learned in the seven and half years of recovery since then is that emotions are a beautiful part of life when you learn how to handle life's ups and downs. In my experience, people in recovery need to watch out for the high points of life as much, if not more, than the low points.   Since I was inept at processing emotions prior to recovery, I credit it entirely for the life I lead now.  As painful as it was, hitting rock bottom and watching my world crumble actually gave me a life I could only have dreamed of back then.  This is all to say that entering recovery can feel incredibly overwhelming, and depending on your situation, you may need to enlist help to sort through everything.   One of the reasons rehab was beneficial for me is that it was essentially an immersion course in how to deal with emotions, with a group of other people learning to do the same.  Meetings are beneficial for the same reason.  In addition to therapy and meetings, it was also important for me to find new outlets for my emotions.   Not all new endeavors I attempted in recovery stood the test of time, but they were distracting enough to help me get through some of the bumps.   What really made a difference, and one with life-long staying power, are the tools I learned in recovery and my other mental health work that allow me to truly feel life and not be afraid of my emotions.