3 years: brainstorming my ongoing recovery strategy

[[Ch...]]

Heya,

 

So I’m back from my travels in California with friends and family, and from an amazing three weeks picketing with other writers in LA, (as well as through the wave that came from a night of drinking and storytelling with my uncle), and I want to assess what’s working for my recovery.

 

I had a lot of ups-and-downs while traveling, including nights of insomnia that left my non-functional the next day as well as mood swings and overwhelm that I kinda pushed through in order to keep interacting with people. My healing strategy has essentially been to live life as fully as possible, while also giving myself the space to heal and recover. This is still broadly a decent strategy, but I have noticed that some things may be slowing my recovery.

 

-drinking. I don’t do this so much at home, but when I’m traveling I drink regularly, especially because I get socially anxious so can wind-up drinking to cover the agitation.

 

-pressure. Early in my recovery process, I realized that my dream was to be a screenwriter. To be honest, I think writing helped me turn a corner out of acute and back into living because it kept challenging me to stretch my abilities. But now the pressure I put on myself to succeed makes the agitation worse and I need to remind myself that I’ll find success more efficiently if I focus on my recovery.

 

-sleep meds. insomnia has been an up-and-down problem throughout, especially because inadequate sleep makes the next day hell. so at times i’ve taken cbd oil, codeine and flexeril to sleep. i’ve stopped the codeine and minimized the flexeril, though cbd i still take every night. at this moment, i have an intention to cut the flexeril completely and to try reducing the cbd.

 

-diet. i’ve had systemic inflammation my whole life and i know that cutting dairy, caffeine, gluten and sugar helps. i’m going to try reducing all of these.

 

-emotional regulation. this is the trickiest one. i live in a different country from most of my friends and family and where i experience a language barrier. being alone is one of my biggest triggers and sometimes my life situation means i can hear the inner vibrations of the recovery process and unknowingly amplify them. i do not have good answers for this, but i think telling myself now that distraction is actually my best friend and if i need to actually engage with a topic i can do so either with a therapist or after i’m more recovered.

 

-genetic testing. a recovered bb user used genetic testing to giver herself a diet plan that worked for her. i’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but it’s kinda onerous to figure out how it all works so have been putting it off. this would be a good thing to do.

 

This is everything off the top of my head that I would like to do in order to improve my recovery process. I’m also going to add that these are intentions and I’m going to try not to beat myself up about not being perfect. It’s so easy in recovery to hold myself to impossibly high standards and then to blame myself for my suffering. Like, I’m basically in purgatory and my continued existence is already a massive accomplishment. If I can also take actions that might shorten the time in purgatory, even better.

 

I hope my thinking out loud helps someone else in their process. Three years is a long time to still be recovering, but I know that it’s happening and I hope that it the end of this I get that powerful feeling of inner strength that so many success stories talk about.

[[pi...]]

CharlieWaltz,

 

It sounds to me like you already have inner strength. You are doing a lot to aid in your recovery. I’m not so sure about the drinking though, if it’s in large amounts. I have been healed for a very long time and drink very little. A random glass of wine or something similar. I just don’t feel the need or desire to have more.

 

I’m very happy you’ve take some pressure off in terms of career plans. I think you are right in just letting it happen.

 

No one is perfect, we all have to achieve th balance that is right for us. You are doing that! I wish you the best!

 

pianogirl