I Couldn't Think My Way Into Change
From the day that I started therapy, as early as fifth grade, I began learning and understanding things in my life cognitively. I then attempted to implement these ideas into my life, change my behaviors around them. This is the very basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). What I struggled with though was actually implementing different behaviors in my life. As a result, nothing ever really changed. Even though I went through therapy and understood these concepts, I did not take action to change anything. I had so much awareness, so much knowledge, but I didn't know how to do anything with all of it. I didn't know what to do with all of it.
Something that my dad always used to say to me was: "Awareness is half the battle." This sentence was one of the most frustrating things that was constantly said to me. It made me feel helpless, like I was halfway through the battle but had no clue how to take on next half. I kept wanting to give up because although I was "halfway through the battle", it was clear that awareness alone was not going to take me anywhere.
Looking back, I realize that I was showing up to therapy in hopes that it would just miraculously change my life. I was not putting in the work. I knew how to reach out for help, but I didn't know what to do with this help. I didn't know how to put the work in. I didn't know how to take what I was learning and implement it in my life to bring about change.
Putting in work meant actually making changes in my life based off of the things I learned. Implementing action rather than just hoping. I was never able to think my way into change, but now, I could act my way into change. I realize now that it was very hard to act based on simply understanding this knowledge rather than feeling it when it presents itself in my life. Another challenge was the discomfort that doing things differently would bring. Finding the tolerance to sit with discomfort has been a huge part of my journey.
From the earliest point of being in treatment, the idea that I was addicted to chaos and drama was engrained in my head. While I understood that I was addicted to it and that it was unhealthy for me, I didn't stand a chance against not putting myself in chaotic and dramatic situations. I thrived on these situations. I had been in these situations from as early as I can remember. I had been sober for over a year and continued to find myself in chaos and drama. At the time, I could not understand why.
One day, I saw a woman that I was in a brief relationship with walking with another man. In this moment, I felt pure jealousy. The jealousy that I felt was not because I wanted to be with this woman. I was not jealous of the man with her. In that moment, I had a profound realization of where this feeling was coming from. I was jealous that my life had become peaceful and to a certain extent boring. I missed the chaos that this relationship brought me; the toxicity, the fights, the ups, the downs.
The jealousy of this chaos was the first time I ever attributed a feeling to this idea of being addicted to chaos and drama. Now that I was able to attribute a feeling to it, I stood a chance to steer clear of it. When this emotion comes up for me now, I am able to recognize what it is tied to and I am able to make a conscious decision to go in a different direction. Before I was able to recognize this feeling, I was already in the middle of the chaos before I was able to do anything about it.
The way that I got here was through experience and being conscious of my emotions. In active addiction, I was never conscious of any of my emotions because I would use drugs to suppress them. No wonder I was never able to make any progress based on my awareness. While I understood intellectually, I did not understand how it pertained to me emotionally. In reality, this awareness that I had was only half of the awareness that I needed. I was missing the awareness of emotions. Through numbing myself, I never would have been able to come to this conclusion. I was setting myself on a fool's errand; trying to grow while not feeling my emotions.
Today, I understand that the way to grow is to actually allow myself to feel. Often times it can be very uncomfortable to feel emotions, especially ones like sadness, fear, anger. Without feeling these emotions though, I am unable to understand where they come from. If we avoid discomfort our whole life, we will be avoiding growth. Growth comes from entering into new realms within our life. Expanding into these new realms is uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. That is why so many people resist it. Even if we are miserable, it can be less scary to sit with the misery rather than make changes toward something that may be less miserable. There can be a comfort in misery, chaos, addiction because it is all we know. The unknown is a lot less comfortable. For me, the unknown contained something that is beyond my wildest dreams; sobriety and a life that is worth living, surrounded by people that I love and that love me.
