How to Achieve Emotional Sobriety
If you
are in early recovery, you may have heard old-timers going on about “emotional
sobriety”. When we first get sober, we often have the misconception that
recovery is just about being physically separated from drugs and alcohol. As
time goes on, we begin to understand that the substances we used were only a
mere symptom of our substance abuse disorder. We used in order to numb our
feelings, emotions, and attitudes upon life and our fellows. Becoming fully
recovered entails correcting negative behaviors and patterns of thinking. We
have to develop emotional sobriety in order to fully remove the desire to drink
or use drugs.
Emotional
sobriety is defined by your emotional wellbeing and your ability to
regulate your own emotions after becoming free from alcohol and/or drugs. In
order to make meaningful changes in your life and relationships, it is vital
that you work to treat the mental symptoms of your addiction. It is often said
that addicts and alcoholics are “restless, irritable, and discontented”. In
order for us to create and manifest true recovery, we must overcome our
personality difficulties.
Bill
W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous describes emotional sobriety best,
“How shall our unconscious—from which so many of our fears, compulsions,
and phony aspirations still stream—be brought into line with what we actually
believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden “Mr. Hyde”
becomes our main task.”
When you are only
physically sober, rather than both physically and emotionally sober, you will
still be affected by distressing situations that you are incapable of resolving.
Emotional sobriety is vital to long-term recovery, as it allows you to navigate
triggers and emotions that once caused you to get high or drunk.
Before we get
sober, our main issue is usually that we don’t know how to identify or regulate
our emotions. Once we remove the drugs and alcohol, we are left with nothing to
calm or soothe the negative emotions that will crop up. Learning how to
regulate your emotions is a huge part of being emotionally sober. In sobriety,
many people utilize therapy or 12-step fellowship meetings in order to learn
the skills required to regulate their emotions.
Often, we come into
recovery with a surplus of unresolved trauma. The barrier between us recovering
from trauma tends to be our unwillingness to accept the reality of our past.
When we become emotionally sober, we have worked on radical acceptance, which is a tool used to
accept negative circumstances that we cannot change. Once we are able to accept
the reality of something, it makes it much easier for us to work through the
issue and move forward. Also, making it a practice to accept all of your
emotions as valid will allow you to work through them properly; resulting in
emotional sobriety.
Once you take drugs
and alcohol out of the equation, it is vital to learn how to behave
differently. If you are still stuck in the cycles of your old behavior, relapse
is inevitable. To prevent relapsing, developing emotional sobriety is key. In
order to do this, it is important to work through any traumas, develop mental
stability, and learn how to work through your negative emotions in a healthy
manner.
Author Bio:
Maya
Kelley is an upcoming writer in the recovery community. She is passionate about
working to break stigmas in relation to mental illness, addiction, and trauma.