Sharing and Caring

[MajestyJo]

How do you handle the problems in your life? Do you obsess
and blow problems out of proportion? Remember, It’s all in your head!

That was what I was told for years. I tend to take exception to that. When I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia it gave a reason for why I thought and acted the way and gave me validation as to who I was. For many years I looked outside of myself for it, today I don't need to affirm my worth through others. Even after the diagnoses, some doctors said that fibro was all in your head and it took a long time to get some validation that it was a rehabilitating disease.

Alcoholism is the same. It was certain my disease talking and directing my path for many years. In today I know I don't have to walk there and with a daily walk with the God of my understanding, I trust Him to give me the awareness, knowingness and perception I need one day at a time. Sometimes, I think I see too much. Then I have a problem with keeping my mouth shut and not blabbing it about. I try to respect others and allow them to find their own way. They don't need my two cents added to their already chaotic mind.

It always amazes me how two people can see the same thing and get different messages. It is even more mind boggling when you introduce a topic at a meeting and you get several viewpoints and experiences about what at first seems to be the same thing, and yet can be so different. It was very humbling to me in early recovery to hear my thought coming out of the mouth of others. So many times I thought I was the only one. It wasn't all in my head. It was in other people's head and heart too.

Several years ago at a meeting a guy said, "Some people talk from their head instead of their heart." I went to my sponsor afterward and said "I think he was talking about me." She said, "That is alright, if you were, then that is where you are at in the moment." I remember being so upset. I was about 2 years sober and was trying so hard to work the program and little did I know at the time, I had so much healing to do and I had only touched the tip of the ice burg.

I can see my obsession in little ways. Not so much about the past, but in little things in today. I will see something I would like to buy or eat and the thought will stay with me until such a time as I can turn it over and ask for help to have it taken away or until I go out and by that sweater, until I go have some Chinese food or have that double mushroom pizza. Sometimes if I can't afford to go to do the Chinese food in a restaurant I will make my own version. I have found that when I have turned things over I have been approached by a friend who donates to the cause. I might not get the sweater I looked at but may end up with three instead. A several times different friends have asked whether I would be offended if they offered me their clothes they can no longer fit into, their mother's who has passed away and they are cleaning out her closet, a bridge partner who was 90 and dying and losing weight and I really appreciate the reminders of her. They may not be new but they were new to me.

I have always been told to look for the postive in things. It is always there if you look for it. I have good and not so good memories of my parents. I have never hated them. There were times that I resented their actions over the years but thanks to the program they are healed. I had abandonment and rejection issues too, and yet for every negative, there are positive attributes. My mother may have been strict in some ways but she instilled so good values in me. My father helped me financially on several occasions and allowed my son and I to stay with him. That has positive and negative repercussion but on the whole I was the one who profited.

The Big Book says, "We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it." That is true for me, and just because I can go back there and look at it, it doesn't mean I have to bring it into today. I can share the experience with others, share the lesson learned and I feel each time I do, a little more healing occurs. When something happens in today that is a direct result of the past, the program gives me the tools to deal with it. I can't change the past, but I can learn from it and I can change the patterns and behaviors that no longer serve me in today. I can heal the feelings but I can't do that by ignoring them and shutting them down or off. Ignoring something never made things right and doesn't make for reality but an illusion of "Hey, I am just fine!" or a control issue that says "I can handle this." I can't pretend things didn't happen to me but as long as I aware of them, acknowledge them, accept them; I can take the action to change my attitude or change my attitude to take action which will allow me to heal and change.


I have been blessed in so many way, I can not begin to count. I don't try to tally the score but try to pass them on to others. It isn't about he did this, she did that any more. It isn't about what and who I was in the past but who I am in today.

In my head for so many years were the tapes that I wasn't worthy, that I wasn't deserving of recovery, that I was less than, and all those negative tapes that use to play in my head. I learned to change them. I was blessed with good teacher and counsellors who showed me a better way of living, more importantly a better way of thinking. I will never forget the many times they kept saying to me, "You need to accept your humanness." It is alright to make mistakes, it is alright to make an error, it is alright to do a silly thing, etc. This is something that still affects me in today. When I make an error at bridge, I can still beat myself up and carry it into the next day because I pulled a wrong card or didn't stop to rethink things out and made misjudgments. No one beat me up more than I did. I can still do it and I can let it rent space in my head. I know that if I make a mistake I am not one. I don't have the thought of being less than but as my motto for many years says, "I can't stupidity, especially in myself." The nice thing is I can forgive myself and others because I have taken down the walls around my heart.

The longest journey in recovery is the one from the head to the heart. When things stay in my head, I open the channel to my Higher Power and He opens the door to Light to let the darkness shine.