Explaination

This information is from a blog I found whatmesober.com
It’s important to remember these things.
It puts it in easy to understand terms,
and sets out a simple course of action.

“Recovery causes a great deal of stress. Many addicts and alcoholics never learn to manage stress without alcohol or drug use, or do so only after many attempts at sobriety.  Our ability to deal with it depends on our willingness to take care of ourselves and maintain a healthy physical, emotional and spiritual lifestyle.  Repairing the damage to our nervous systems usually requires from six months to two years with a healthy program of recovery.  PAWS is the cause of most relapse in early recovery.”

Emotional overreaction or numbness 

People with emotional problems in early sobriety tend to over-react. When this overreaction puts more stress on our nervous systems than we can handle, we react by “shutting down” our emotions. We become emotionally numb, unable to feel anything. We may swing from one mood to another. These mood swings may baffle us, seeming to come without any reason, and may even be misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder.

Stress

Difficulty managing stress is the most difficult part of post acute withdrawal, and of early recovery in general. Early on, we may not be able to distinguish between low and high stress situations, because for so many years we managed stress by using mood-altering substances.

Worst of all, the other PAWS symptoms become worse when we are under stress, and this causes the stress to increase! There is a direct relationship between elevated stress and the severity of PAWS. Each amplifies the other.

At times of low stress, the symptoms of post acute withdrawal may lessen or even go away completely. When we are well-rested, relaxed, eating properly and getting along well with others, we seem to be fine.  It is easy to see how we can get careless at these times, and many a relapse has occurred when things seemed to be going just fine.
                                   

Get a reality check!

We need to ask someone if we are making sense — not just in what we’re saying, but also our behavior. We must be sure our perception of what is happening matches up with reality.



Self Defense

We are responsible for protecting ourselves from anything that threatens our sobriety, including anything that triggers post acute withdrawal symptoms. No one else can do it, because no one else can feel the warning signals. Learning about addictive disease, working a program of recovery, finding out more about PAWS—all of these things reduce the guilt, confusion and stress that intensify the symptoms and lead us to relapse. If we learn to do these things, we will begin to accept our own needs, and learn to be firm about letting other people, places and situations push us into reactions that threaten our sobriety.

We must identify our own stress triggers. Then we must learn to change them, avoid them, change our reactions, or interrupt the process before our lives get out of control again.

Balanced Living–the aim of recovery

Balanced living means that we are healthy physically and psychologically, and that we have healthy relationships with others and, more importantly, with ourselves. It means that we are spiritually whole. It means that we are no longer focused on just one aspect of our lives. That is no longer necessary. It means we are living responsibly, giving ourselves time for our jobs, our families, our friends, and time for our own growth and recovery. It means allowing a higher power to work in our lives, even if that is only the influence of people around us.  With balanced living, we addicts and alcoholics give up immediate gratification as a lifestyle, in order to attain fulfilling and meaningful lives.

It means a balance between work and play, between fulfilling our responsibilities to other people and our own need for self-fulfillment. It means functioning at our optimum stress level: maintaining enough stress to keep us functioning in a healthy way, but not overloading ourselves so that it becomes a problem.

Stress, in and of itself, is not necessarily bad. It can be the tension that keeps life interesting. But stress is unsafe for us until our new found ways of dealing with it are second nature. Until then, when it arises we run the risk of returning to our old ways of stress management.

Balanced living requires loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves. Nutrition, rest and exercise all receive the proper focus in our lives to provide energy, manage stress, allow freedom from illness and pain, fight fatigue, and rebuild our damaged bodies.

Summary
Freedom from physical distress allows psychological growth. When we feel good, it is easier to do the work we need to do, eliminate denial, guilt and anger, and move on to self-confidence, self-esteem and learning to feel good about ourselves.

Balanced living requires a strong social network that nurtures us and encourages a healthy, recovery-oriented lifestyle. This network provides a sense of belonging. It includes relationships in which we are a valuable part of a whole: immediate family members, friends, relatives, co-workers, counselors, therapists, employers, 12-step group members, and sponsors.

Recovery is not about quitting alcohol and drugs. It is about learning to live a life that does not require mood-altering chemicals to be worth living.
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I have forgotten the importance of having fun, making time to have fun in my life.  I also added one too many things to my plate. I know where my focus needs to be now.  I pushed myself beyond some limits. It’s ok if there are some things I am not ready for yet. If my reactions and how I handle situations, like school on top of everything else cause a complete meltdown for me, it’s time to re-evaluate things. Environment is important, balancing life is important, we must include the good things, the simple things.  Sometimes we need to call a time out with others, and with ourselves and just get back to doing the basics to maintain a healthy sober life.  The rest will come in time, perhaps when we are more equipped to handle it.
~Jenny

Dangerous Complacency

I know things can be hard anywhere we go
I just need a different kind of hard right now
a potential for hardness or happiness
somewhere else.

I'm ready for a new set of problems.
I'm tiring of these old ones.
They, frankly, are getting boring,
tedious.

If a new thing is hard,
that's ok,
I just want hard
somewhere else.

~Jenny

Ohio

It’s no secret
not anymore
memories
still float there
would it have
been different
in the home state
or is there
destiny
two different
realities
perhaps
or perhaps
those were the days
when my hand
fit in yours
it is no secret
I wanted to be
little forever.

~Jenny

Answers

So the below post was very emotional.
I asked for help from on high to a very
wise and spiritual woman
who wrote many Lessons
where I work.  She was a
spiritual teacher. 
When I asked for help from her,
and opened one of the books she
had written,
this is the answer I read and received:

"Never, never, never hate! If you cannot love, try to develop true neutral detachment after sending the person light, for hatred will establish an electromagnetic attraction between yourself and the hated one that must be overcome later on the mental level - a karmic tie."

I can send this person light.  I can try to detach myself from these feelings and situation mentally.  I don't have to spin my wheels trying to love this person. I just have to send them light and try to become neutral. What a great answer.

~Jenny

Some Things I Am Chewing On

Watching a show on Wayne Dyers
"Wishes Fulfilled" last night
he said something that really struck a cord
with me.

He was talking about an interview he did with a reporter who asked him “so I can do ANYTHING I want if I practice what you are saying. I can become a line backer for the NY JETS if I want?”

Wayne Dyer responded with “does that feel natural to you?”  He talked about if things we wanted to do feel natural to us. If we can really see ourselves doing them and feeling how it would feel.

Do the goals I'm trying to achieve right now feel natural to me? Honestly, not really. But it’s hard because I’ve felt led do set out on some new ventures, ones I have started.  But maybe they are not right for me. Am I trying to compensate for the things I have not completed in my life?

Maybe I didn’t complete them because they did not feel Natural. Like massage therapy, I liked doing that for a while, but then I realized I was really stretching the core of who I am by holding myself to that. At times I feel very badly about this because someone else paid for my schooling and invested in me.

And Forestry. It was a struggle over 10 years ago when I was trying to achieve that. School Programs got cancelled. I made a substitution for Horticulture, not something, looking back at it I truly wanted to do.  And can I really imagine myself building trails, reading maps, doing Math, Math! For Christ’s sake, I hate math.

Does it feel natural, I really don’t know.  Is there something else I am supposed to get out of this? But then I think, life is short. Do I really want to go to school for a year and invest all of that, time, money, struggling with my fears and social anxiety, just to say, I did it?

In the wild, animals have a nitch.  A nitch is defined as:
niche   )
n.
4. Ecology
a. The function or position of an organism or population within an ecological community.
b. The particular area within a habitat occupied by an organism.

What and Where is my Niche? I know this is an age old question and affects many people in their lives. Do we take intuition, synchronicity as a sign? Do we follow it?

If I had a dream, I would say it would be to put on a uniform everyday, and stand in a booth at 17 Mile Drive in Carmel, and take money, give maps, even empty trash, ride around checking on things. If I could do anything I wanted, this would be it. And thinking of this feels natural for me. Working in the Angeles Forest, the most used forest in the country with it’s throngs of people, animals etc. I can’t see it, I can’t feel it.

I know, I am a crazy dreamer, and I don’t finish things.  But I can’t finish things just for the sake of finishing them.  Is the above a crazy dream? Unrealistic? I don’t know.  Should I chase it? See where this all takes me? Or....am I running out of time.

~Jenny

Lotus Pose

Decisions are different

as you grow up
growing up
is a term used for
growing inside

the soul
seeps through
the skin
this is good

I had the worst
ideas when I drank
ideas I thought
were great
when I was inebriated
living in my own
little world

Solutions back then
were disastrous
and impulsive

now I wait
patiently
and take care
of the small things
that are important
right now

times are hard
very hard
but the realization of that
in and of itself
is a strange comfort
because times
never stay well
or hard forever
good comes back in

me today...
New problems
are not created
by my reactions
or behavior
what is to be dealt
with,
is all that is to be
dealt with
right now
and nothing more

~Jenny

It’s not so far away, after all
say the snow capped mountains
under their blanket of clouds and cold
It’s in the unknown
It’s in your heart
it has already happened in the future
it has already happened in your past
lying in bed questioning God
lying in bed wondering
if there is a God
the frightening feeling
of what if you are wrong
or what if you are right
the odd feeling
that you are ok with either
just for a moment
until you return to your senses
whenever that may be.

~Jenny