Web Exclusive: A Never-Ending Adventure

When I entered rehab 24 years ago I told them that I only had two emotions. I was mad or I was okay. That wasn’t really true. I had all the emotions. I just didn’t know how to recognize them or deal with them. They had me do a little exercise. For several days I couldn’t talk. I had to walk around the unit and if someone said something to me I could only respond with feeling words. I also wasn’t supposed to use any feeling word that had anything to do with anger. I could use words like “happy,” “sad,” “fear,” “shame,” “remorse,” “depressed,” “grateful,” “arrogant”—those were all okay, but no anger. It forced me to stop and think a little before I reacted to what was going on. The exercise was one of those things I hated about being in rehab. I hated it, but it also worked. It worked as a start.

The process of dealing with my emotions has been a never-ending adventure. I say adventure rather than struggle because I don’t like to look at things too negatively. Being an alcoholic isn’t a problem that I have to solve. It’s a continuing reality of my life. The emotions are part of it. The emotions are a very active and involved part of it. As the years go by, at least for me, the desire to drink fades into the background. I simply have other ways to celebrate, relax, mourn, and generally cope with the day. Drinking isn’t the first thing that pops into my head anymore. I mostly need to maintain an awareness of when the idea of drinking tries to sneak up on me. The emotions, on the other hand, are something that I don’t even want to fade into the background.

The problem I have with my emotions is that they try to run away with me. I need to keep a handle on my emotions, especially anger. Many of us seem to have baseline type reactions to things. When we don’t know what else to do, we drink. On the emotional side, some of the more common baseline reactions are fear, shame, and my personal favorite, anger. There seems to be some sort of center of gravity that just keeps taking me back there. Early in sobriety the biggest problem I had in dealing with my emotions was that they were so irrational, and I dealt with them so irrationally. I had to relearn my emotions. If I started to feel mad about something I quite literally had to make myself stop and think if the feeling was rational. Most of the time the feeling wasn’t really anger, I was embarrassed or hurt or fearful or something else. Then, instead of taking that feeling and stuffing it in a box of anger I had to let myself feel the real emotion.

One particular instance occurred during treatment. As I was approaching discharge I was talking to the counselor about my aftercare plans. I was talking about heading off to the mountains and spending a week or so communing with God in a silent retreat. The counselor told me that she thought that was a really good idea. My knee-jerk emotional reaction was to disagree with her. I realized that the only reason she told me that it was a good idea was because it was a bad idea and her agreeing with me was her way of dealing with my emotional tendency to oppose anything anyone told me. I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was going to really need to work on that. At the time I didn’t think of it as a sudden spiritual awakening. I do now.

The feeling of fear that made me want to avoid the Fourth and Fifth Steps was precisely what the Fourth and Fifth Step would take away. The feeling of shame that would stop me from making amends was precisely what the Ninth Step was designed to deal with in the first place. I had what the professionals would refer to as “dysfunctional coping mechanisms.” If I had a good strong feeling my first impulse would be to drink. My next impulse would be something like defiance or arrogance, basically something along the lines of, “This is my turf, and you’re not welcome here.”

One of the most emotionally trying times in my life was my divorce after 14 years of sobriety. The proximate cause of the divorce was the relapse of the girl I had met in AA and married. I experienced the full range of emotions in all their glory. Fear about what was going to happen to me and the kids. Fear for her. Shame over the failed marriage. I didn’t really notice at first, but as time went by there was an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. At that time I came up with a little saying that has really helped a lot ever since. Feel the emotions, but act rationally. I can’t say that I was always perfect. I would let myself feel the feelings. Then I would ask myself, “What’s the smart thing to do next?” That put the brakes on some potential bad reactions.    

The secret of dealing with things that give me a sense of shame, guilt, or remorse is to make amends and then allow myself to be forgiven. After that, I need to stop repeating the same mistakes.

I put a lot of effort into understanding my own emotions and that has put me in a position to sometimes help others. The best example of this would be my kids. As they have progressed through adolescence we have talked about emotions a lot. One big issue I talk about with the kids are their emotions related to their mother. It’s been about 10 years since she relapsed. They have often been told that there is nothing they can do. We have taken it another step. I’ve told them that they can do nothing in several different ways. They can do nothing because they don’t care, but that’s not true. They can do nothing because they’ve given up hope, but that’s not true either. They can do nothing because they are simply waiting for something beyond their control to change. That’s where everyone is right now. It’s okay to feel some hurt, some fear, some anger, and some love. But they don’t need to feel any guilt, because they haven’t done anything wrong.

In the meantime we all try to feel the emotions without letting them run away with us. We feel the emotions and we try to act rationally. There are things that we can’t control that make us feel bad. At the same time we all try to go about our day as best we can. I think my kids are doing pretty well. For myself, I know there’s still plenty of room for improvement. My emotions are never going to go away. I hope in the future I can feel bad when bad things happen and good when good things happen. I also hope that my behavior gives me a lot of things to feel good about.