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Obsession

July 29th 2008 17:15
obsession

Obsession can rule your life. It is probably among the top five behaviors, along with resentment, anger, fear, and pride that can be devastating. These emotions can be the primary cause of obsessive thoughts. Trying to chase a thought out that keeps playing over in your mind can be exhaustive. There are many ways to deal with obsession, but the only way these work is by constant vigilance.

There are those that claim that keeping busy, even with the most mundane tasks can help get your mind off the obsession. My experience has been both negative and positive with keeping busy. Work is a four letter word for me. I truly wish I was obsessed with some sort of “career”. I can’t relate to those that are workaholics. They are fortunate that they have found something to be passionate about, but it can also be a way of not dealing with painful feelings. The obsessions that I get are always very unhealthy and dangerous to my recovery. I was doing landscaping during a difficult time in my life, and one day my job was to weed a huge garden. Not only was it extremely hot that day, but it was the kind of mindless work that is great for letting those thoughts get way out of control. I felt as though I was in a prison of my own deep dark thoughts with no way out. I even experienced a few mild panic attacks and the only way I could deal with it was to take a break and go get a drink of water. I thought that taking a break would help clear my thoughts, but I realized that those thoughts followed me wherever I went. It’s the old saying that “No matter where you go, there you are“. There is no escape and everything you try seems to fail. Alcohol, cocaine, and weed were once old friends that I could count on to pull me through, but there came a point where even they let me down, in fact they made it worse by magnifying the thoughts 10 fold.

That’s where I came to the crossroads. I didn’t want to live, and I didn’t want to die. The choice of moving in the direction of living in the solution, or to continue down the road that leads to endless suffering, and eventually death.
Finding something that you like to do is very important. It helps by reminding you that you can become who you were always meant to be. Some folks find this by trying things that they never tried before. This is very empowering and can be the spark that you need to rise up and change your life and live it the way you want to.
Obsession can lead to another dangerous emotion such as jealousy. This is perhaps one feeling that is the most dangerous to us, and to others. It tortures us with the thoughts that are uncontrollable and difficult to identify until it passes. It sometimes seems as though we go through a blackout. These thoughts come to life by our imagination running wild. Some of the scenarios may not be true, and that is bad enough, but when they are true, it can lead to a rage. Certain relationships with the opposite sex can trigger these feelings almost instantly. Certain people can be toxic to us, and we need to identify who those people are and try and avoid them before it is too late. Otherwise, we end up falling for them and get hurt. Talk about falling into a huge pit of despair, heartache, rejection, sorrow, grief, anger, confusion, resentment, and self pity, a very potent cocktail ( Hee-Hee, I said cock!) That never has good results. These people may not be aware that what they say makes us crazy. On the other hand, revealing these feelings to them may cause them to play on it, especially if they are emotionally confused as well. Two sick people don’t make a well person.
Obsession can also take other forms. Gambling, sex, shopping, pornography, booze and drugs, just to name a few. It can seep into every part of our lives and make it unmanageable.
Like all feelings and thoughts that can hurt us, we need to be aware of the pitfalls. We need to be able to take control of our thoughts and not “fall asleep” and let our brain go on cruise control. Do whatever works for you. Just don’t give in to the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. The results are never positive and we are the ones that always suffer.

Keep the faith
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You are what you is

July 7th 2008 16:45


It always baffled me how some people can go through the everyday mundane BS and get a sense of satisfaction from it. They are able to get up in the morning and do what they have to do. It is almost as though it drives them, the same thing over and over. It drives me too. It drives me F - - - - ing crazy. It wears me down. I know a guy that is retired and is all freaked out because he doesn't know what to do with himself during the day. He was in a line of work he really enjoyed and now he is lost. I offered to show him how to retire and do nothing (For a one time fee of course with monthly installments)
I have a friend that tells me that those with depression and or mental illness often get caught up in their diagnosis, which causes them to think that there is no solution and they are stuck forever. However, there are many who believe they can live normal lives, and shake off the label they have been tagged by the mental health professionals.
It is the classic case of black and white thinking. That the symptoms of the illness will one day go away. Having battled alcoholism and addiction, I came to a realization that recovery is one day at a time, a phrase that is often heard in AA. To come to see that being aware is the way to keep us on the beam. There are going to be those days where it feels as though we are being consumed by depression, as well as days where we feel like we are on top of the world. The part that really twists me up is the constant changes in my thoughts. One minute I am happy, then 30 seconds later I am sad or angry. It still is difficult to deal with this rapid change of moods even though I know they need to run their course, but during those “storms”, it is easy for me to lose sight of that. That just might be the point where we get lost, the overwhelming feeling that hijacks our thought process and our mind switches to cruise control and we are heading for a fall. Looking back on my life, I can now see how this has ruined relationships with people in my life, some that are permanently damaged.
Obsessive thoughts can drives us wild, constantly running through our brains on a continuous loop. Some folks keep themselves busy to drive the thoughts away. This might work for them, but my experience has proven that this isn‘t always so. When I get into obsessive thinking, they come and go and the first reaction is to try and make them go away. This might explain why “normal” people get caught up in their work. I sometimes wonder if their over indulgence in work is a way of dodging those uncomfortable feelings that are caused by the thoughts of things they never dealt with. Fears, shame, guilt, and even anger could very well be the culprits. But that is just speculation. Maybe they are just wired that way. Just for kicks and grins, I looked up the word normal in the dictionary: Normal- Conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.
Society has a measuring stick that it uses to sort between the common types versus abnormal. I have always taken what society says with a grain of salt. Human beings are different, and we as a society often lose sight of that.
It is hard to play the hand that we are dealt. There are so many things about me I wish were different. But there are some things that can be changed, and then there are those that cannot be changed. I guess I just need to accept those things in me that I will never change. That isn’t a cop out or negative thinking, that’s just the way it is. In the words of the late great Frank Zappa:

Do you know what you are?
You are what you is
You is what you am
(A cow don't make ham...)
You ain't what you're not
So see what you got
You are what you is
An' that's all it 'tis

Keep the faith
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Anger turned inside out

July 4th 2008 13:15
anger resentment rage


Anger can be a devastating emotion, especially to those that are in recovery from alcohol and or drugs. The fuel feeds the fire that can lead to actions that we may later regret. When it comes on, we feel the need to act out to relieve the conflict inside us. Most of the time we just lash out expecting to feel better, almost like a knee-jerk reaction to things that twist us up. The most dangerous part of anger is resentment. Resentments are like anger over and over again, reliving the anger, playing it over in our heads like a broken record, nothing seems to make it stop. That is where the anger can turn to rage. Talk about devastation. Some of us can actually go into blackouts from the rage. It seems to come out of nowhere because the next thing we know, we are acting out on those deep dark thoughts that roll around in our head. I am sure we have all heard that depression is anger turned inward, that may or may not be true. Most of the time, anger is brought on by fear. A fear of facing something that we don’t want to face, or a fear of not knowing where we are going in our lives, economic insecurity, growing up, they are all driven by fear. Not being in control and not knowing what is going to happen next can terrorize us. It is very easy to say to someone that is going through a great deal of anger, “let it go, why are you holding on to this? Don’t let it get the best of you”. And then something happens to us and we realize that we should follow our own advice. Whenever I hear somebody talking about their anger, I listen very close to what they are saying and I always find that I can relate to them in so many ways. You‘re experiences are your own. I never tell someone to get over his or her resentments for numerous reasons. First, it does not really help anyone, I know it never helped me, and second, I do not want to get my teeth knocked out!
Road rage is a common occurrence. It is so easy to fall into that trap. There are so many stories where people have yanked drivers out of their cars and started to pound on them. That is untreated anger. That sort of behavior has a hefty price tag, because these days, it is assault and then you will have even bigger problems than your anger.
How do we deal with it? One thing that I have to work on is trying not to personalize things that people say or do. Yes, there are instances where people do mess with you, but the key is to be aware of the traps. Most of the time, people are not out to get us. You never know what people have gone through during the course of the day. Maybe they lost a job, or they had a fight with their spouse. They could have a parent that is dying or maybe they just had one of those days and WHAM! Some little thing, maybe a broken shoelace is enough to set them off. There are many ways to relieve anger and stress. Eat the right foods, exercise, talk to a friend about what pisses us off, but the main problem lies in nipping things in the bud. It can be healthy to let someone they are doing something wrong. Most people look the other way; the best thing to do is confront them, not in a hostile way, but in a way where you let them know that something aint right! Most of the time, if we keep this stuff to ourselves and not mention anything, we run it repeatedly in our heads and the next thing we know we have a resentment. Those paralyzing resentments and raging anger are a huge part of depression. There were many things that happened to us at a young age that really tripped us up. We never learned how to process our emotions in a healthy way. It is like having a basement full of stuff that you do not know what to do with. It all piles up and we become overwhelmed. That could be where the awareness comes in and shows us that we are human, and we could just take one little corner of the cluttered basement and slowly, yet steadily clean out what we can.
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