Hi everyone and thanks for reading my blogs this year. We were getting deep into trauma and co-dependency and then life took over. I ended up on television and then I found out that my anonymous self will be having paper published in an academic journal in January 2016 (the first of many hopefully)!
So I have been having a period of self actualisation which seems to have helped lots with my mental state. I feel strangely less neurotic, more fulfilled and whole and have become much more easy going.
I never thought being published with have such a profound affect.
All my life I have struggled to be heard. Growing up in such a dysfunctional family meant that I often felt unheard, dismissed and emotionally muted.
I now feel that internal voice has now begun to be heard.
I still plan to go into EMDR treatment early January to process the emotional trauma from my childhood.
2016 holds much promise.
All given to me by recovery.
I am so grateful, so so grateful for my recovery that I can’t express it in words.
In four days time i celebrate my tenth year in recovery. Thank God!
God Bless you over this festive period, often a tough period for alcoholcs in recovery.
Surround yourself with those who understand and can support you, that is my solution to this alcohol fueled period of the year.
It is a time for haves rather than have-nots and self pity can often seep into my mind. This year it has been replaced big time with gratitude.
Every moment of every day is precious. It is just realising that. It takes time to realise it takes time.
“We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.”
From
The Promises. (From pages 83-84 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous).
Have a great one!
Santa is almost ready! Have a lovely and merry Christmas everyone!
The Alcoholics Guide to Alcoholism 
Merry Christmas to you, too 🙂 congrats on being published and HUGE congrats on 10 years!! Awesome!
thank you Lori! Recovery introduces you to a self you never knew was going to exist. A ongoing voyage of discovery! Merry Christmas to you too!
Well done Paul on your self-actualisation! Being published is great news so congratulations on that and 10 years. Have a lovely Xmas 🙂
have a lovely Christmas too Lucy x more interior work to come in the new year, now that is where it’s really at!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! to you too!
Congrats and Happy Holiday season from Down Under. Thank you also for your writings here. They don’t touch the pain but they remind me that others are going through similar. I am almost 2 years sober and will be starting EMDR in January too, and also struggling with that desperate need to feel heard, yet firmly embedded in my brain is what I have to say doesn’t matter, just as I don’t matter. The joys of codependency recovery on top of the rest. LOL. Also beginning a Psych Degree at Uni, and a little nervous. Your writings bring me a type of hope I didn’t realise till now. Thank you Paul, very much. Be well.Mark (from Oz, LOL)
Happy New year Mark and best of luck with your Psychology degree, I loved doing my Psychology degree and still use much of it in my other academic blog – http://insidethealcoholicbrain.com/ and in co-authoring academic review papers with two professors here in the UK. I was doing a PhD but left it so I love Psychology although there are some odd people who do it I have to say 😉 It means a lot to me to hear my writing brings some hope to readers and hopefully a bit of understanding too. This is a big part of me “giving back”. I trust you have someone to support you as you go through the EMDR as it can be very emotionally taxing at times I believe. Recovery is discovery, unknotting the past and its restricting effect on us. I get that “what I have to say doesn’t matter, just as I don’t matter” it seems like a negative self schema fueled depressive tendency, possibly linked to PTSD for me. I sort of fight my way through it but wonder if this is the most adaptive, healthy way to deal with it. No doubt this coping strategy has been useful as a survival tool before but maybe the EMDR will allow me to be and to cope in a different way? Shedding some weight from the past and becoming more human is what I hope it helps me achieve anyway. I feel I can become somewhat remote at times so would like to find an alternative way of being to this. Essentially I am in the mood for handing back a few “legacies” from my past, consigning them to where they belong , embedded in my long term memory and not exerting such a strong influence as they do now in my present. All the best Mark on your ongoing journey of discovery in your recovery, hopefully we can share notes on our progress to help ourselves get through and hopefully others too. LOL Paul
Thank you Paul. HP be with you and yours in 2016. Mark
God Bless Mark!
It’s great that your article is published. I find that my emotional recovery has gained a lot of ground just by blogging. Of course I dream of bigger things but just having a voice goes a long way. I no longer feel that I have to defend my viewpoint in life to everyone — if some people say they don’t understand me, even if people falsely accuse me, it doesn’t change the fact that I have been heard. No one can take it away. Congratulations on ten years.
thank you – I relate to what you wrote. I used to think I was arrogant thinking I was on the right lines in my academic theorising until my co-author, a Professor, said I was confident in my views which is different. She said I had conviction – this was very useful to me. In recovery we turn out to be more than one type of person, we have different personas within our general self I find and these have always been in us, it is who we are – we just got lost and lost this sense of who we are and what we are good at. I know I am good at certain things whereas other things need some work. This is the same for most people. I may not. however, have the time to be near perfect so I concentrate on things which continually have cropped up in my life, such as writing, selling (I run my own business) being an advocate etc These things seem to be a big part of me so when do them I am kinda true to myself. I resonate with me which is very important to those like me, with poor attachment to parents, as it is this resonance with self which is poorly developed. So blogging helps with this and with emotion processing using the front of the brain to explain who one feels, this is great for emotion regulation (as emotion needs to be cognitively represented to be fully processed) and becoming more mature because we may become more emotionally mature by using the prefrontal cortex to manage emotion rather than emotion managing us! Recovery long term seems to be a movement in brain processes from limbic and emotional areas to greater control of this emotional area by the more controlled and reasoning prefrontal cortex so blogging is good for this and maybe could be recommended as a therapy option in treatment centres. It helps one engage with the self and tackle negative self schemas head on. I drank often because I felt bad about myself and can still feel a failure regardless of my achievements, typing this out now is helping me process this and move on with my day, relieved of this negative feeling and thinking. So here’s to Blogging!!
Congrats on your 10 years, that is great. I am happy for you. 🙂 And happy for me. Thank you for walking this road before me and sharing your experiences and knowledge.
And obviously very much congrats on the getting published as well! 🙂 Cool! 🙂
xx, Feeling
Thank you Feeling – it was a good end to 2015, I was published, was on television and celebrated 10 years in recovery!! It only gets better if you put in the work, that has been my experience 🙂 Generally through time we become more sane and reasonable the longer we are in recovery. And less fear based, thank God! 🙂 That is a message of hope for those struggling, it does get better..and better! xx Paul
🙂 I am happy for you. 🙂