Recovery #2
Aug. 10th, 2021 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cybermuleI no longer constantly think about not smoking. So I think for the most part I've won that one. There will be times when I wobble and times when I cheat, but the spell is broken. I realised this as I walked across to the shop this morning - there was no thought of grabbing the first fag of the day. Summer holidays were a good choice of quitting time.
I've learned that to quit stuff, I personally need to mostly walk a path where I'm not constantly arguing with myself over whether I should or shouldn't relapse. Sooner or later, I'll lose the argument. Addictions are terrorists that fuck with your head and fight dirty.
Try and make it so the idea of having a cigarette never really presents itself. Avoid decision fatigue. Avoid bargaining.
I'll be wrestling the booze demon next. I never thought I'd get to the place where I'd have to do that, but I think it's here. I *could* give up anytime but I don't. So I really should. This is the tipping point.
I could probably write a blog post just about booze really. And I probably will. The short version is that it is fucking great at papering over dissonance.
I had a really terrible couple therapy where we were talking about why I lost my shit so horribly. Basically I was exhausted and sleep deprived into a nervous breakdown and I fucking snapped. Self preservation, people tell me. Still not very cool.
So my ex basically said that if I was that exhausted, why didn't I ask for help? Therapists always love that shit, but I don't entirely buy it.
Yes, I categorically should get better at asking for help. Trauma victim. But what if you do try and nobody does the thing? Or rolls their eyes when you keep reminding them? Or gets pissy that you're not happy after everything they've done. What if you're too fucked to be able to formulate a request?
Which I categorically was.
And I was sitting there being told to ask for help more when the dissonance wave smacked me round the back of the head. My therapist, a grown up woman, was telling me to ask my adult partner for help in cleaning up his shit. Aren't grown ups just supposed to do that? Like, shouldn't they get over "being scared of getting it wrong"? Even offering a list of things to just pick from when things got hectic was unacceptable as that was just going to make ex feel like he was being mollified into feeling useful.
I don't know. I own my shit - I should speak up more. But all the grown ups I know just seem to do little bits and bobs for each other. And I felt so very wrong in my feelings that I had been run into the ground and that I was probably just an arsehole.
So I went home and got drunk to make all those difficult feelings go away. It's a great non-coping mechanism. And eventually self medication and fawning became the way I coped with the couple therapy that just seemed to be endless complaining and no commitment to change. There's probably something I should note there, actually - I seem drawn to men that criticise rather than create.
Eventually I chose myself over the couple and quit. But there's definitely a lot of cleaning up to do.
I've learned that to quit stuff, I personally need to mostly walk a path where I'm not constantly arguing with myself over whether I should or shouldn't relapse. Sooner or later, I'll lose the argument. Addictions are terrorists that fuck with your head and fight dirty.
Try and make it so the idea of having a cigarette never really presents itself. Avoid decision fatigue. Avoid bargaining.
I'll be wrestling the booze demon next. I never thought I'd get to the place where I'd have to do that, but I think it's here. I *could* give up anytime but I don't. So I really should. This is the tipping point.
I could probably write a blog post just about booze really. And I probably will. The short version is that it is fucking great at papering over dissonance.
I had a really terrible couple therapy where we were talking about why I lost my shit so horribly. Basically I was exhausted and sleep deprived into a nervous breakdown and I fucking snapped. Self preservation, people tell me. Still not very cool.
So my ex basically said that if I was that exhausted, why didn't I ask for help? Therapists always love that shit, but I don't entirely buy it.
Yes, I categorically should get better at asking for help. Trauma victim. But what if you do try and nobody does the thing? Or rolls their eyes when you keep reminding them? Or gets pissy that you're not happy after everything they've done. What if you're too fucked to be able to formulate a request?
Which I categorically was.
And I was sitting there being told to ask for help more when the dissonance wave smacked me round the back of the head. My therapist, a grown up woman, was telling me to ask my adult partner for help in cleaning up his shit. Aren't grown ups just supposed to do that? Like, shouldn't they get over "being scared of getting it wrong"? Even offering a list of things to just pick from when things got hectic was unacceptable as that was just going to make ex feel like he was being mollified into feeling useful.
I don't know. I own my shit - I should speak up more. But all the grown ups I know just seem to do little bits and bobs for each other. And I felt so very wrong in my feelings that I had been run into the ground and that I was probably just an arsehole.
So I went home and got drunk to make all those difficult feelings go away. It's a great non-coping mechanism. And eventually self medication and fawning became the way I coped with the couple therapy that just seemed to be endless complaining and no commitment to change. There's probably something I should note there, actually - I seem drawn to men that criticise rather than create.
Eventually I chose myself over the couple and quit. But there's definitely a lot of cleaning up to do.
