Free Heal The Abuse - Recover Your Life by Jason Goodwin

feel sad, we should allow ourselves to
cry. It is only when we accept and allow our negative feelings that
we can move through them.
    The process of facing and releasing our pain
moves us from a victim mentality to a more balanced, positive way
of thinking. It’s important to take this process slowly and
carefully. We want to avoid trying to do too much at once. We need
to take whatever time is necessary to move through our pain and our
grief in a safe and gentle way.
    We need to remember that emotions are simply
energy in motion. Pain is an energy that passes through us and out
of us when we allow ourselves to feel it. Healthy ways to work
through our pain include talking to a non-judgmental friend, AA/NA
sponsor, pastor, or counselor about how we feel. We can journal
about our feelings and allow ourselves to cry.
    How would it feel to be free from the pain of
our past? Would we become happier? Would we get our lives back?
Could we recover from addiction? Could it lead to healthier and
more fulfilling relationships?
    When we stop feeling like victims, we stop
looking like victims. We stand up straight with our shoulders back.
We take full strides, hold our heads high, and make eye contact
with whomever we meet.
    Allowing ourselves to feel our pain and move
through it is an investment in our future. When we allow ourselves
to release the pain we feel, we begin to grow, change, and move
forward with out lives.
     
    Exercise 7-2
    Positive Ways To Deal With Your Pain
    1. Allow yourself to cry and feel your pain
alone or with a supportive family member, friend, pastor, or
counselor.
    2. Talk about your pain with a supportive
family member, friend, pastor, or counselor.
    3. Journal or write about your pain, and get
it out on paper.
    4. Write a letter to your abuser that
expresses your true feelings, and decide later whether or not you
want to deliver it.
    5. Express and release your pain in artistic
ways. Music, woodworking, sculpting, painting, and dancing can be
very positive emotional outlets.
    6. Build your pain out of clay, then smash
it, break it up, and tear it apart.
    7. Learn how others dealt with their pain
through spiritual study. Analyze stories from the bible like the
book of Job.
    8. Learn to spend 15 minutes a day just
feeling your pain and not blocking it in any way.
    9. Work to transform your pain into positive
goals for your future. Try to learn from your painful experiences,
and use them to transform your life into something more
positive.
    10. Work to transform your pain into positive
goals for your relationships. Use the painful experiences of your
past to define what you want and don’t want from your future
relationships.
    11. Understand that pain is limited. When we
allow ourselves to feel and release our pain, we will eventually
get through it.
     
     
     

Chapter 8 – Relapse
    “Recovery is a process, not an event.”
    -Alcoholics Anonymous
    To relapse means to return to active
addiction after making a commitment to a recovery program and
lifestyle change. Relapse can happen to the most committed
recovering alcoholic/addict. The purpose of this chapter is to
reassure you that a relapse is not the end of the world. Many
people use a “slip” as an excuse to return to active addiction.
Difficult emotions are scary. That’s why we suppressed them for so
long with alcohol, drugs, food, or sex.
    The truth is that we can’t avoid our negative
feelings. When we try to suppress them, they build up inside of us
like water behind a dam. Removing the control valve of our
addiction can lead to a flood of emotion. When I quit smoking
cigarettes, I felt angry and depressed for a full year.
    This flood of emotion can seem unsettling at
first, but in time that flood becomes a stream, and the stream
becomes a trickle. If our true goal is health and sobriety, then a
relapse is simply a bump in the road.
    When we have made a commitment to improving
our lives, we immediately return to abstinence from the drug