Hi Brooke,
I’m in the 3rd month of SCS and getting so much out of it. I’m in the SO class now since Jan 1. My normal drinking habit has been 3-4 glasses of wine every night over the last 25 years. I never drank when I was pregnant or when the kids were little I only drank up to 2 glasses. I’ve also had periods of not drinking, I went to AA twice and stopped for a year and then again another time for 6 months. I absolutely hated it and didn’t identify well with the people I met there. I don’t plan to go back there.
I’m a successful business owner, loving close relationship with my husband, 2 wonderful grown children, etc. Everything looks and is wonderful in my life except that I don’t like my drinking so much every night.
So, I decided to take a break. I had 8 days of not drinking and writing down urges and then last night I caved and had 4 ciders (the only thing we had in the house), but I did stop there. It was the feeling I had was so horrible that I just wanted to escape it.
It’s a feeling I remember from long ago, being a teenager and a young woman in my 20’s.I’m trying to identify the feeling so I can connect it to my thoughts, but this one is hard. It’s a feeling of self-hatred and worthlessness with lots of anxiety and I just want to run, hide, and make it go away. It’s so dark.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and the feeling was back almost like it wanted me to pay attention. Old feelings of not fitting in, beating myself up, absolutely hating myself, tons of anxiety, way back from my past – horrible stuff. I know that this is the feeling I want to keep away from my life, so I drink to numb it.
So, I woke up this morning, started writing about it and got absolutely stuck as to how to put it in a model.
Can you help me put a couple of scenarios together for this one? Is the feeling the circumstance?
Thanks so much, Brooke!