emotional sobriety

Putting down the addictive substance (alcohol, cocaine, pills, pot) or activity (gambling, porn, shopping, hoarding) is where sobriety begins, not ends.

In the absence of repeated intoxication, you are left to face yourself, your relationships and your life. This new set of conditions often unleashes a torrent of emotional chaos that sends far too many folks scurrying back to the destructive escapism of addictive behaviors.

depression, anxiety & addiction

For people who are in recovery from one self-defeating activity or another, there is no shortage of depression, anxiety, dread, irritability, restlessness, shame and fear. And let’s keep in mind, psychological/emotional pain and discomfort is also physically brutal. It’s just unpleasant all over.

What’s different is that while these psychologically/emotionally painful experiences were once drowned in alcohol or chased away by the excitement of a drug run, a new porn site or a hefty wager—in recovery these emotional realities are faced and ‘processed’ in an honest way, one day at a time.

To process feelings is to:

1. Consciously FEEL them
2. Go through them, not around them
3. Share them with trusted allies, talk about them, etc.
4. Learn from them, thus expanding your emotional intelligence

emotional pain is a wake-up call

Emotional pain/discomfort is your mind and body’s way of telling you something important. Increasing your ability to discern what your feelings are telling you is central to lifelong learning and personal growth.

This habit of ‘staying attuned’ to the ebb and flow of your own emotionality provides you, over time, with a deeper clarity about who you are, what matters most and how to take better care of yourself. Building off of the seminal work on mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn and on emotional regulation by Marsha Linehan, more and more psychotherapists in NYC are making this type of mindful-awareness an integral aspect of their practice.

emotionality as a social activity

Negative feelings should not be kept secret or ignored, nor should they be annihilated via intoxication of one sort or another. Emotional pain/discomfort needs to be respected, investigated and processed with people you trust.

Talking seriously with others about your emotional life (and being open to feedback about it) is central to building the emotional flexibility and resilience needed to successfully face the never-ending complexities and challenges of adult life.

addiction, healthy relationships & emotional growth

Recovery from addiction requires that you continuously cultivate and refine your ability to form and maintain healthy, satisfying and emotionally regulatory relationships. When this ability is insufficiently developed, your relational needs are not met. Just as plants need sunlight and water, human beings need intimacy and healthy emotional exchanges throughout life. Without it we wither and ‘die’ on a number of different levels.

A painful paradox we all must contend with is this: Human beings are social creatures while also displaying a surprisingly powerful tendency to drift toward ‘aloneness’ in all kinds of ways. This is why it is so important to remind yourself often that building and maintaining supportive and authentic relationships is central to cultivating emotional sobriety.

To do this, you must learn to constructively process your own emotional pain/discomfort in ways that bring you closer to others, rather than deeper into isolation and disconnectedness.