August 31

”What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there is nothing to compare it with.” Anonymous

One of the things I have struggled with in recovery is redefining what a normal life is. After years of living a double-life, of escaping reality through fantasy and acting out, it’s been quite the adjustment to the “real world.” A big part of the challenge is the fact that I don’t have an easy gauge to determine what normal is…life until recovery had been abnormal. One of the tricks I have used these past couple of years is to see what my first instinct is and then do the opposite, or at least something very different. For example, if I get the urge to turn on the TV knowing I am going to watch without a time limit or other boundaries, I pick up recovery material to read instead. If I have a pull to skip a meeting, or to pass on calling a friend in recovery, I go to the meeting or make the call. Or if I feel the need to make a decision on my own and trust my gut, I wait and ask for advice before deciding what to do. It’s taken a renewed faith in a Higher Power to recognize some of these warning signs and to realize that I don’t always make the best choices. I do believe addiction, and this means all addictions, no matter the drug of choice, are a disease of choice. That the hyper-stimulation of our brains affected my ability to make good choices, to weigh options and realize the consequences, before they happened. So I am learning to trust others to help guide me as I regain a better sense of how to make good choices.

Affirmation I will humble myself enough to allow others to advise and guide me as my past has clearly demonstrated that I have not made the best decisions.

April 8

”Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” Ambrose Redmoon

Fear is a natural instinct; its role is there to help us distinguish things that are good for our survival from those that threaten it. It’s an automated response and determination that happens before we have the chance to think and evaluate a situation without any coherent reasoning. Yet our brain has not evolved in this process are we are very rarely in situations of immediate danger when our fear reflex responds. We need to be able to adjust to the initial shock, the fight, flight or freeze response, and allow the moment to pass then determine the real level of danger and threat in what is happening around us. This is not to say the reflex does not have some merit, there are certainly occasions where our life may be in imminent danger. But our fear reflex in most day-to-day confrontations is merely a reflection of our ego and basic needs and desires being threatened. We often put more emphasis on our fear response than the situation demands.

Affirmation Today I will be aware of the times I feel afraid and give myself time to evaluate why I feel threatened. I will react with an appropriate response and not one based on fear.