Is It Okay To Feel This Way?

This morning someone asked me, "Is it okay to feel this way?" and it zapped me right back to early sobriety. What a confusing, vulnerable time that was! I'd separated myself from feelings, and everything else, with boozing and using for so long that I had forgotten how to feel. I was also very fearful that my feelings would be 'wrong' or 'bad' so I didn't want to say what I was feeling. I can remember searching the faces of others trying to figure out how they felt so that I could express the same emotions regardless of how I felt. Thank You, God, and ETA, for moving me past that painful insecurity.

I keep a coin in my pocket that proclaims the number of years it has been since I was in active addiction. Also stamped on this coin are the words, To Thine Own Self Be True". Today, thanks to the recovery program ETA and the maintenance of my connection to the old HP, I understand the meaning of those words and can apply them to my daily life.

My sponsor says that feelings are not fact, they are not right or wrong, they just are what they are. I can either identify and accept the truth of what I am feeling, or I can waste time and energy telling myself how I 'should' or 'should not' feel.

The emotion I seem to default to most often is anger. Even after several years of working the steps with a sponsor, I can still have trouble identifying what I'm feeling. If I'm afraid, frustrated, overwhelmed, hurt, disappointed or uncomfortable, chances are that I will speak and act like I'm angry. If anyone asks me whether or not I'm angry I assure them that I'm not then tell them what I'm feeling and try to modify my words and actions. Sometimes, I think I'm angry when it's really something else.

Once I was talking to a friend about not getting a job that I'd interviewed for. I knew that, physically, I couldn't do the job but I wanted it anyway. When I conceded I couldn't do the work, I told a friend that I was angry with myself for pursuing something I knew I couldn't have. She said, "If that had happened to me, I'd be disappointed." (That pig! She's lucky I didn't punch her lights out for saying such a thing. The fact that she nailed what I was really feeling made things even worse. After she fired off that bald faced accuracy, I really was angry!)

However we feel about something is okay. It really is. It is by denying something is true that we get into trouble. I must be honest to, and about, myself and I have to let other people help me be honest to, and about, myself (without punching their lights out). It says so right there, on my sobriety coin.

Have a good and sober day.