I’m surprised it took two months on lockdown with my Mom during the coronavirus pandemic to get into a major argument.
It started small, but then exploded. I was extremely upset, I didn’t quite realize at the time but I cried, ALOT. I felt stressed, and a lot of childhood anxieties and emotions came up again, stuff I hadn’t felt in quite a while.
I was with her in the car when it happened, we were headed for a walk on the beach. When we got there, we ended up going our separate ways. I stumbled around for a while, trying not to make eye contact with anyone I walked by as tears streamed down my face.
What to do with all these emotions?
We were driving back and we didn’t speak. I was really thirsty. In the past, I would have taken my thirst as a cue that I needed an alcoholic drink.
“Man, big fight, I need a drink.”
Now, with a couple months of sobriety, and building up my sober tools, I realized that I really just need some water or hydration after being stressed and crying that much.
Sometimes when you think you need an alcoholic drink, you are literally just thirsty.
I got home from our drive, I fixed myself a soda water, my hands shaking a little bit with stress. I still felt emotionally drained, tired. But now I was hydrated and feeling a little better! A little more calm.
I had work I felt like I needed to do for my business. But I was laying on my bed just kind of curled in a ball.
This would be another time I would have made an excuse to drink. “Well, now I need to drink to motivate me to work when I really don’t feel like working“, was the common argument in my head.
Instead of falling prey to the excuse, I acknowledged that I had a rough day, that it was ok if I didn’t get the work done, and to not feel guilty about it. And then I took a bath with some bath salts that my sister had given me for Christmas. I did something special for me and took care of myself. This felt especially important since the conversation with my mom left me feeling shaken, wounded, put down, berated, and unacknowledged.
Taking care of myself in this way actually let me PROCESS all the emotions that came up. Self-care, what a concept! Instead of tuning out by drinking alcohol and numbing myself to get away from it, I thought about and wrote through all these feelings that were coming up. It ultimately helped me to process many feelings I had felt as a teenager that I had been working through most of my adult life. Feelings of inadequacy, of shame, and of not being good enough. Feelings that led me to get away from home as soon as I could at 17. Feelings that I’ve never truly allowed myself to examine or feel with 20 years of numbing out with alcohol.
This fight brought all these emotions up and allowed me to acknowledge and heal that teenager that didn’t even know exactly what she was running from. I would never have been able to work through this if I had gone through my normal routine of big fight + hard emotions = get drunk. And I am grateful to have found the strength and persistency to pursue clarity and find new ways to take care of myself during stressful or anxious times. Now big fight + hard emotions = treat myself with grace and care.
