ohhh this is so fucking good (which goes to show how much spills out when we let it? and how it can be!?), like all of it, and also that book I mentioned (End of Your World), it's like 100% about the last part of what you're talking about! Thanks for this.
I love anything recovery and wanted to share my personal journey and I hope it may help anyone else that is going through something similar. 11 years ago I decided I needed to get sober to find a life partner and marriage, nobody would want the non-sober me, trust me... I attended AA and worked the steps and my fellowship side was quite strong, I sponsored, and had a lot of service commitments. Eventually I stopped talking to my sponsor and people close to me in the program. I stopped attending meetings and being involved with the fellowship. Essentially I was the classic story of doing the steps in reverse.
About 7 years into sobriety, that middle ground I think you’re referring to, I had to face some trauma from my past of being molested. I started therapy and did EMDR. I had all these tools I learned from AA, but now they weren’t readily available. Could they have been? Probably, but I was deep in self-pity and self loathing. Around this time my wife and I were doing IVF and completed 8 rounds with no successful results to have a child. I had no desire to pick up a drink, but did start using cocaine to cope. I stayed using for 4 years on and off and could not stop.
15 months ago I was blessed to adopt a beautiful baby straight from birth. I convinced myself this life altering event was enough to keep me sober, but for personally I could not. I started using at night while my wife and baby were asleep and then I started using during the day to stay awake. I realized how out of hand I was getting and started an outpatient program. I immediately was back with like-minded individuals who were staying sober and working a program. It was the best decision I’ve ever made and proud to say I’m now sober, again, for 6 months.
It’s been an amazing journey and, “I do not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” I realize I can be of help to other addicts who have gone back out or others who may have childhood trauma similar to mine that they have never disclosed or felt comfortable sharing with anyone. I’ve been filled with resentments, fear, and the wanting to control every outcome because of not being able to control what happened to me as a child. I’m now living with love, compassion, and empathy for others and everyday is a new experience for me that I love and am grateful of.
Thank you for the topic. Sharing will keep me sober just for today. Tomorrow will be a new day to conquer and I’ll deal with it then.
I have gotten it and lost it so many times I started calling myself The Comeback Kid. I was always coming back from something. Example: I trained for a year to run a marathon, ran it, could barely finish a 5K because I was so beat up. Got it, lost it, came back…different. I started running differently. I had loved training, but without a goal, I ran for fun. Running for fun wasn’t that much fun, but I still wanted to burn a lot of calories, so I started yoga. Enrolled in yoga teacher training for one 20-hour weekend each month for 11-months to get a lot of yoga in a short time (very yogic, right?), got my certificate, but realized I didn’t enjoy teaching, I just liked practicing. Got it, lost it, threw myself into Ashtanga yoga. I think the pattern is emerging. Maybe getting “it,” and losing “it” isn’t a failure but just part of the process? Maybe it IS the process? Maybe always coming back is simply becoming.
My days/weeks/months/years are an ebb and flow of trusting myself and my ability to write, and then questioning why I thought I could trust myself, and then questioning why I questioned.
This weekend was the ultimate "i got it, I lost it". Debt, ED behaviors and wine during a play date bc I wanted to fit in with new mom friends. All in a few short days.
After 2-3 years of pink-cloud living, I feel like I'm loosing this new identity of "recovered" I had cultivated.
It feels like water running through my fingers, slipping past, unable to grasp it or reel it back. Terrified at the thought of things unraveling further.
Today, I'm turning the "faucet" off. Those choices were made, that time is gone. Onward. Forward. But first, time to retreat and recalibrate. I'm multi-faceted. And, I'm wiser today, on guard...and checking out this book!
I've been sober from alcohol for almost 10 years (7/31/13 is my date). I've been sober from insane relationships and drama for almost 5 years. Those were my biggies, and for the past couple of years I'm in the same ebb and flow so many others have written about. I am finally, FINALLY learning to just go with it. I keep making Schedules for Important Things like daily sadhana, daily writing, daily journaling, daily exercise. The minute I do this, I start to rebel inside. I usually stop around the 15- or 22-day mark. Sometimes I don't/won't/can't make it to day 2. I don't know why. But I always go back! I had been feeding myself nicely for about three weeks (I have never formally had an ED, but I'm an American woman who grew up in the '80s, so there's that low-level shit going on), but tonight I had Cheetos for dinner. I will work on the revision of my novel for several days in a row and then act like my computer is a snake for a month. Today I slept in until 10 and felt like shit in all possible ways. But I've decided as long as I'm not actively hurting myself or anyone else, it's OK. And it's enough. Doing my writing and editing work-for-pay is enough. Keeping my home clean and comfortable is enough. Being a good and sober mom to my 12yo is enough. I'm just not going to sit on my meditation cushion every day. And I wish my teachers would stop saying things like IF YOU MISS A DAY IT'S LIKE MISSING THREE WEEKS or other nonsense. I *am* going to eat Cheetos for dinner, literally and otherwise. But if I don't hate myself or desperately want to escape my own life, I've got it. I think. Maybe?
I’m grappling with my own got it, lost it crisis right now, and becoming aware how much it’s requiring me to shift my sense of self also. I moved countries, quit my corporate job, built a coaching/writing/yoga teaching business, thrived in my sobriety truly built a life I didn’t need a holiday from - now I’m back in the corporate world, in the city I started in once again counting down to every. single. holiday and wondering how tf did I get here again. I have no answers today but finding solace in the concept.
I was a standout student, mainly to cover up a violent unsafe home. So as soon as I got to college on my own, I spent my first semester doing anything but studying because I felt free for the first time. I ended up flunking out and restarting somewhere else, but it's been a reoccurring theme for me as a deep people pleaser. I get a sense of who I am and then I lose it in order to be accepted and never seen as an outsider. Now at 42, sober, medicated, and therapized, I have it maybe 70% of the time and honestly, I'll take it.
I've noticed my life tends to run in 10-12 year cycles. Got sober in AA in 87, lost 140lbs in OA, built a thriving business, fell in love, bought my first home and had a great relationship.
Then after 12 years sober was burned out trying to prove I was a "successful entrepreneur" and relapsed with alcohol and pot and my life literally burned down around me. Lost everything, business, house, relationship, savings, gained over 100lbs and stayed out for 2.5 years. Finally after chronically relapsing I went on antabuse got back into recovery. lost 160lbs, and rebuilt my life.
Even though I was sober from alcohol and pot and had maintained 160lbs weight loss for the next 20 years, I was still anxious, compulsive with caffeine and food and couldn't seem to maintain long term friendships. My romantic relationships were also challenging. I never felt I was truly "sober" since was still so out there with substances that "pass" in recovery circles.
Finally after 30 years in recovery, I read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and I discovered I was suffering from untreated complex PTSD. I never knew being raised in a chaotic alcoholic home with parents who had zero conflict resolution skills, where there was chronic tension and fighting, and being bullied as an overweight kid could cause me to develop complex trauma. I thought I had to have been physically or sexually abused to be considered a trauma survivor.
So five years ago I did a deep dive into healing my trauma and was so blown away how much I hadn't healed on a nervous system and relational level I decided to write a book about my healing journey to share what I learned and how healing complex ptsd had made a profound difference in my life. I thought other folks who were raised in dysfunctional home and/or in recovery could benefit from my experience in healing trauma.
I titled my book: It's Not About Food, Drugs or Alcohol: It's About Healing Complex PTSD
It was published in Feb 2023 on Amazon in Kindle and paperback versions.
After spending 2-3 getting the book written, marketed and published, I am finding myself once again
in the "lost it" phase of my journey. I'm still working on trauma healing with new cutting edge treatments, yet part of me is so sick of having to deal with attempting to regulate my moods and nervous system without substances.
If I've learned anything on this journey, I'm confident that as long as I don't give up I will find the next new "thing" to take my healing to the next level. But when your in it, it can feel like It will never end. It's not lost on me that this is how it felt growing up in my emotionally violent and neglectful home. I'm sure my "lost it" is in part an emotional flashback from my crazy childhood home.
So, I do my best to keep on keeping on, and having a place like this to share the not so shiny parts of ourselves is in and of itself healing. Thanks Holly for opening up this thread!
Hey Holly, I am so glad to here you loved my book!!! I gave it all I had since after going through the arduous process of taking it to the finish line I didn't know if I had another book in me!
Many "I got it, I lost it" moments/lessons. Here's what came to mind today:
I GOT IT! I shed the 50 pounds I gained in college. I LOST IT...I turned 30, moved cities, and said goodbye to the structure of the fitness program I so heavily relied on. The weight returned.
Defeated and unable to find my way back using the path I previously took, I explored anti-diet culture and discovered intuitive eating. I threw out my scale and fell in love with feeling good. Two years later, I went in for a physical and saw that I had once again shed 50 pounds. I GOT IT!
...and then the pandemic, the loss of loved ones, the isolation, the grief, the inability to find my way back to feeling good amidst all the suffering, I gained back 50 pounds for the third time. I LOST IT.
And here I am, July 2023. Trying to find my footing. Unable to take the same path I previously took. Wondering what it is I am "not getting" so I can "GET IT" again. Trusting that the path will reveal itself in time.
Marie - I am right there with you! This resonated, thank you for sharing - “Trying to find my footing. Unable to take the same path I previously took. Wondering what it is I am "not getting" so I can "GET IT" again. Trusting that the path will reveal itself in time.”
Here’s to trusting. And a lot of patience for the time ♥️
I got my whole life- I got the dream job, the amazing girlfriend/partner I was going to propose at a giant concert of our mutual favourite singer in Verona in September and I had a ring and I had it all set up. Then I lost it all but I didn't loose my life. I saved my life. I got myself to an ER and saved my life instead of getting on a plane that would have killed me. And then I had to grieve it all especially the partner who told me it was anxiety and told me to just get on the plane. I had to let it all go. I spent the last 4 months rebuilding my last from scratch- rebuild my private practice, going to therapy, making new friends, and dating again. Being back at ground zero was horrible but it was a redirection i have embrace because if i dont what is the alternative? If I held onto the partner and the dream job and everything I was just grasping at straws. And it made me feel utterly powerless. When everything was already so out of my control. So I had to focus on what I could control which was letting it all go. And starting over. And starting from where my feet were, and I just started waking up to the moments of everyday I never thought I'd have again. And that's all I need right now, the moments I never thought I'd have again- good coffee, yoga in the Park and maybe holding a loves hand while laying in the grass. That's it. Back to basics and that's all that really matters. Nothing else matters but simple small things. And I am just starting the rebuilding ... again. And its tiring but im grateful I get another shot at it.
What it feels like to me is that our bodies carry the emotional effects of trauma not only from this life of ours but the absorption of our parents trauma and the generations before that in our DNA and if you subscribe to it, past lives. These are the emotions that couldn't be expressed at the time due to survival/safety etc. such as rage, grief, terror. But not only negative emotions but joy, peace, pleasure, desire. They are stored rather than expressed. When we start having "good" experiences such as getting sober or being actually loved, our bodies relax a little and that exposes the next layer of emotional trauma which initially we might use our old coping mechanisms to deal with. So from my point of view it isn't that people are failing, it's that we are slowly reclaiming our bodies free of stored pain. Knowing that that is what is happening can help not "relapse" or despair. But also what I have realised that for me a relaxed state after being sexually abused and neglected as a child is actually terrifying because it is so unfamiliar and I haven't realised how panicky it has made me until quite recently. But looking back I can see a very gradual process of peeling back the blocked emotions which at the time just look like "failures" to someone who has been conditioned to see herself as bad. It in my view is the very opposite - it's courageous in the persistence to keep growing towards health and love rather than settling for the type of conditions and relationships you initially received as a vulnerable child.
I feel like this is a big theme in my life. Sometimes I think it may be self-sabotage stemming from my first big had it/lost it experience. I had my dream job, touring the world skating with Disney on Ice. I was sexually assaulted at a night club in Buenos Aires I was at with some other skaters after a show. In the weeks that followed, I would start crying out of seemingly nowhere, or get really scared, or have a panic attack. I had never experienced mental health issues before this. I was a mess. I asked my employer if I could go home for a while to get therapy, and was met with "You have a contract. If you break your contract you won't be hired back." So I left. I didn't skate again for 20 years. I sometimes wonder if because I worked so hard for so many years to achieve a dream that didn't work out in such a horrible way, now when I'm "almost there" with any other goal I tend to sabotage it.
Kari, thank you for sharing this..:I know that feeling, like an experience was so big it imprinted and you’re therefore condemned to repeat it. Very familiar.
Two summers ago, I got my first big photo gig since the Year of our Covid had begun. We were between variants (although we were unaware), I had just invested about 5K in a new camera system (the most I'd ever spent), and I'd finally raised my prices for weddings (I've been a photographer for 25 years). They even commissioned a robe for the bride and she was so happy with it. I was feeling good. The wedding was great and I was really happy with what I had captured. Well, something happened when I went to download them onto my computer and not to get in the weeds of that, basically my card got corrupted and I lost all 800 of them. I let out a scream so wretched, my kids bolted from their rooms, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think. I've never experienced an unexpected death of someone close to me but I imagine it's a shred close. It took a lot of phone calls between bouts of panic/coma that I found a company who could possibly recover them. Fast forward: they did but I basically didn't breathe for 10 days. And get this, it cost to the penny what I had charged to shoot the wedding.
Suffice it to say, I ransacked every nook and cranny for the meaning to this. I shook my fist at God like, Haven't I paid my karma debt?? I thought about selling my brand new camera system and of course, I swore I'd never shoot another wedding again so help me.
Time is so stingy with her insights but generous of grace. I didn't sell my camera. I even said yes to another wedding but only because it was a friend of a friend and the venue seemed interesting. I didn't mention that my community showed up for me during that dreadful 10 days, showering me with hundreds of Venmo transactions in $5 increments over about a 24 hour period. With every little phone ding, I had to practice receiving. Perhaps that was the lesson or something like: shitty shit happens, you can strive or not, take up space or not, it doesn't matter because no one is immune, and sometimes you're held. It's how I respond and I may surprise myself. xox.
Holy hell Sondra, if I couldn’t love you more. This is your essence here: everything I love about you wrapped up in one perfect story. “Time is so stingy with her insights but generous of grace.”
I had a husband (for 55 years) and now I am about to lose him. Guillain-Barre, Miller-Fisher variant, 3 months in ICU. Very severe case, extreme neuron damage. Yes, I am drinking. And thinking about a memorial service.
Do we ever really "get" a thing? I like this prompt, though I disagree with its premise. I don't think we ever get to have something and keep it. The thing shifts constantly... I "got" the job I wanted and then it wasn't what I thought it would be. I "got" into a relationship I thought I wanted and it turns out that wasn't it, either. To answer the prompt: I've gotten a so-called dream job and lost that, too, when interpersonal relations caused the whole project to crash and our funding along with it. But the binary thinking of have vs have not troubles me... isn't life about the striving, not the getting? Anyone else feeling contrarian today...? Regardless, thank you, Holly, for holding this space.
Lol I’m always feeling contrarian 😭 that said, I think spiritual or rational argument about having something is a whole long discussion—do I think we get glimpses of awareness or sense of having achieved something, where we feel we got it? yes, i believe that’s a real experience. Same as how I think the feeling of regression is very real, I gained ground, i matured, I developed, I back slid; I think denying we feel those things is like saying our experiences aren’t real. But in the context of what you mean: do we really ever get something that wasn’t already there? No. So agree/disagree (in the shortest and most reductive way possible.) I do very much agree that there is a super problematic trope in self-dev and recovery and spirituality circles (and in general culture) about the destination; the getting, that obscures what actually matters. I don’t know if I think life is supposed to be a striving?? Anyway there’s my three minute contest. 🫠😘
Hahah- I love this response. Thanks. You're right! I too often cast aside the things I've achieved and forget what it felt like before them. I wrote about this recently but, I have a hard time with endings. "Getting" something is scary because, well, what's next? In that way, I'm more comfortable thinking of life as constant striving, i.e., a constant pursuit of *something,* even when that something is as simple as "knowledge" or "enjoyment." On the regression part: I dislike that word. I think what is often called regression is growth in an unseen form. Because it doesn't look like what we thought it would, or how we wanted, we think it's a sign of failure. Really, though, it's just what needed to happen next. We actually can't go backwards: even depression is trying to tell us there's something here we missed. I guess that's a really sh*tty thing to hear when you're deeply depressed: like, buck up, kid, this too is a learning moment. But it's honestly how I feel and what I've experienced. Maybe it seemed like I was on a road to greatness, but I was riding a broken car. Or whatever the metaphor is. So when I crash, or when the road collapses, all it did was reveal the next step. Like, oh, I actually wasn't ready for that path because I lack the fundamentals. I'm rolling backwards downhill because I never had an engine, or brakes, or whatever... ok, well, I'll stop bugging your comments for today. Thanks again for a very nice brain prompt!
ohhh this is so fucking good (which goes to show how much spills out when we let it? and how it can be!?), like all of it, and also that book I mentioned (End of Your World), it's like 100% about the last part of what you're talking about! Thanks for this.
Wow, this is beautifully written and full of amazing lessons. thank you for sharing!
I love anything recovery and wanted to share my personal journey and I hope it may help anyone else that is going through something similar. 11 years ago I decided I needed to get sober to find a life partner and marriage, nobody would want the non-sober me, trust me... I attended AA and worked the steps and my fellowship side was quite strong, I sponsored, and had a lot of service commitments. Eventually I stopped talking to my sponsor and people close to me in the program. I stopped attending meetings and being involved with the fellowship. Essentially I was the classic story of doing the steps in reverse.
About 7 years into sobriety, that middle ground I think you’re referring to, I had to face some trauma from my past of being molested. I started therapy and did EMDR. I had all these tools I learned from AA, but now they weren’t readily available. Could they have been? Probably, but I was deep in self-pity and self loathing. Around this time my wife and I were doing IVF and completed 8 rounds with no successful results to have a child. I had no desire to pick up a drink, but did start using cocaine to cope. I stayed using for 4 years on and off and could not stop.
15 months ago I was blessed to adopt a beautiful baby straight from birth. I convinced myself this life altering event was enough to keep me sober, but for personally I could not. I started using at night while my wife and baby were asleep and then I started using during the day to stay awake. I realized how out of hand I was getting and started an outpatient program. I immediately was back with like-minded individuals who were staying sober and working a program. It was the best decision I’ve ever made and proud to say I’m now sober, again, for 6 months.
It’s been an amazing journey and, “I do not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” I realize I can be of help to other addicts who have gone back out or others who may have childhood trauma similar to mine that they have never disclosed or felt comfortable sharing with anyone. I’ve been filled with resentments, fear, and the wanting to control every outcome because of not being able to control what happened to me as a child. I’m now living with love, compassion, and empathy for others and everyday is a new experience for me that I love and am grateful of.
Thank you for the topic. Sharing will keep me sober just for today. Tomorrow will be a new day to conquer and I’ll deal with it then.
David this is so generous and beautiful, nodding along with all of it. Thank you, so much. Congratulations on every drop.
Share on David.... and what a gift for your child as well! Thank you
I have gotten it and lost it so many times I started calling myself The Comeback Kid. I was always coming back from something. Example: I trained for a year to run a marathon, ran it, could barely finish a 5K because I was so beat up. Got it, lost it, came back…different. I started running differently. I had loved training, but without a goal, I ran for fun. Running for fun wasn’t that much fun, but I still wanted to burn a lot of calories, so I started yoga. Enrolled in yoga teacher training for one 20-hour weekend each month for 11-months to get a lot of yoga in a short time (very yogic, right?), got my certificate, but realized I didn’t enjoy teaching, I just liked practicing. Got it, lost it, threw myself into Ashtanga yoga. I think the pattern is emerging. Maybe getting “it,” and losing “it” isn’t a failure but just part of the process? Maybe it IS the process? Maybe always coming back is simply becoming.
Comeback kid!!
My days/weeks/months/years are an ebb and flow of trusting myself and my ability to write, and then questioning why I thought I could trust myself, and then questioning why I questioned.
This weekend was the ultimate "i got it, I lost it". Debt, ED behaviors and wine during a play date bc I wanted to fit in with new mom friends. All in a few short days.
After 2-3 years of pink-cloud living, I feel like I'm loosing this new identity of "recovered" I had cultivated.
It feels like water running through my fingers, slipping past, unable to grasp it or reel it back. Terrified at the thought of things unraveling further.
Today, I'm turning the "faucet" off. Those choices were made, that time is gone. Onward. Forward. But first, time to retreat and recalibrate. I'm multi-faceted. And, I'm wiser today, on guard...and checking out this book!
“After 2-3 years of pink-cloud living, I feel like I'm loosing this new identity of "recovered" I had cultivated.” This rings so true for me.
I've been sober from alcohol for almost 10 years (7/31/13 is my date). I've been sober from insane relationships and drama for almost 5 years. Those were my biggies, and for the past couple of years I'm in the same ebb and flow so many others have written about. I am finally, FINALLY learning to just go with it. I keep making Schedules for Important Things like daily sadhana, daily writing, daily journaling, daily exercise. The minute I do this, I start to rebel inside. I usually stop around the 15- or 22-day mark. Sometimes I don't/won't/can't make it to day 2. I don't know why. But I always go back! I had been feeding myself nicely for about three weeks (I have never formally had an ED, but I'm an American woman who grew up in the '80s, so there's that low-level shit going on), but tonight I had Cheetos for dinner. I will work on the revision of my novel for several days in a row and then act like my computer is a snake for a month. Today I slept in until 10 and felt like shit in all possible ways. But I've decided as long as I'm not actively hurting myself or anyone else, it's OK. And it's enough. Doing my writing and editing work-for-pay is enough. Keeping my home clean and comfortable is enough. Being a good and sober mom to my 12yo is enough. I'm just not going to sit on my meditation cushion every day. And I wish my teachers would stop saying things like IF YOU MISS A DAY IT'S LIKE MISSING THREE WEEKS or other nonsense. I *am* going to eat Cheetos for dinner, literally and otherwise. But if I don't hate myself or desperately want to escape my own life, I've got it. I think. Maybe?
I so deeply get all this <3
Very relatable! I had ice cream for dinner last night so you're not alone!
I’m grappling with my own got it, lost it crisis right now, and becoming aware how much it’s requiring me to shift my sense of self also. I moved countries, quit my corporate job, built a coaching/writing/yoga teaching business, thrived in my sobriety truly built a life I didn’t need a holiday from - now I’m back in the corporate world, in the city I started in once again counting down to every. single. holiday and wondering how tf did I get here again. I have no answers today but finding solace in the concept.
Awww Laurie! Hi you. I love “ I did it again.”
I was a standout student, mainly to cover up a violent unsafe home. So as soon as I got to college on my own, I spent my first semester doing anything but studying because I felt free for the first time. I ended up flunking out and restarting somewhere else, but it's been a reoccurring theme for me as a deep people pleaser. I get a sense of who I am and then I lose it in order to be accepted and never seen as an outsider. Now at 42, sober, medicated, and therapized, I have it maybe 70% of the time and honestly, I'll take it.
I've noticed my life tends to run in 10-12 year cycles. Got sober in AA in 87, lost 140lbs in OA, built a thriving business, fell in love, bought my first home and had a great relationship.
Then after 12 years sober was burned out trying to prove I was a "successful entrepreneur" and relapsed with alcohol and pot and my life literally burned down around me. Lost everything, business, house, relationship, savings, gained over 100lbs and stayed out for 2.5 years. Finally after chronically relapsing I went on antabuse got back into recovery. lost 160lbs, and rebuilt my life.
Even though I was sober from alcohol and pot and had maintained 160lbs weight loss for the next 20 years, I was still anxious, compulsive with caffeine and food and couldn't seem to maintain long term friendships. My romantic relationships were also challenging. I never felt I was truly "sober" since was still so out there with substances that "pass" in recovery circles.
Finally after 30 years in recovery, I read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and I discovered I was suffering from untreated complex PTSD. I never knew being raised in a chaotic alcoholic home with parents who had zero conflict resolution skills, where there was chronic tension and fighting, and being bullied as an overweight kid could cause me to develop complex trauma. I thought I had to have been physically or sexually abused to be considered a trauma survivor.
So five years ago I did a deep dive into healing my trauma and was so blown away how much I hadn't healed on a nervous system and relational level I decided to write a book about my healing journey to share what I learned and how healing complex ptsd had made a profound difference in my life. I thought other folks who were raised in dysfunctional home and/or in recovery could benefit from my experience in healing trauma.
I titled my book: It's Not About Food, Drugs or Alcohol: It's About Healing Complex PTSD
It was published in Feb 2023 on Amazon in Kindle and paperback versions.
After spending 2-3 getting the book written, marketed and published, I am finding myself once again
in the "lost it" phase of my journey. I'm still working on trauma healing with new cutting edge treatments, yet part of me is so sick of having to deal with attempting to regulate my moods and nervous system without substances.
If I've learned anything on this journey, I'm confident that as long as I don't give up I will find the next new "thing" to take my healing to the next level. But when your in it, it can feel like It will never end. It's not lost on me that this is how it felt growing up in my emotionally violent and neglectful home. I'm sure my "lost it" is in part an emotional flashback from my crazy childhood home.
So, I do my best to keep on keeping on, and having a place like this to share the not so shiny parts of ourselves is in and of itself healing. Thanks Holly for opening up this thread!
Mary! I loved your book. It's so thorough!
Hey Holly, I am so glad to here you loved my book!!! I gave it all I had since after going through the arduous process of taking it to the finish line I didn't know if I had another book in me!
Many "I got it, I lost it" moments/lessons. Here's what came to mind today:
I GOT IT! I shed the 50 pounds I gained in college. I LOST IT...I turned 30, moved cities, and said goodbye to the structure of the fitness program I so heavily relied on. The weight returned.
Defeated and unable to find my way back using the path I previously took, I explored anti-diet culture and discovered intuitive eating. I threw out my scale and fell in love with feeling good. Two years later, I went in for a physical and saw that I had once again shed 50 pounds. I GOT IT!
...and then the pandemic, the loss of loved ones, the isolation, the grief, the inability to find my way back to feeling good amidst all the suffering, I gained back 50 pounds for the third time. I LOST IT.
And here I am, July 2023. Trying to find my footing. Unable to take the same path I previously took. Wondering what it is I am "not getting" so I can "GET IT" again. Trusting that the path will reveal itself in time.
Marie - I am right there with you! This resonated, thank you for sharing - “Trying to find my footing. Unable to take the same path I previously took. Wondering what it is I am "not getting" so I can "GET IT" again. Trusting that the path will reveal itself in time.”
Here’s to trusting. And a lot of patience for the time ♥️
Omg, I can relate to this so much.
I got my whole life- I got the dream job, the amazing girlfriend/partner I was going to propose at a giant concert of our mutual favourite singer in Verona in September and I had a ring and I had it all set up. Then I lost it all but I didn't loose my life. I saved my life. I got myself to an ER and saved my life instead of getting on a plane that would have killed me. And then I had to grieve it all especially the partner who told me it was anxiety and told me to just get on the plane. I had to let it all go. I spent the last 4 months rebuilding my last from scratch- rebuild my private practice, going to therapy, making new friends, and dating again. Being back at ground zero was horrible but it was a redirection i have embrace because if i dont what is the alternative? If I held onto the partner and the dream job and everything I was just grasping at straws. And it made me feel utterly powerless. When everything was already so out of my control. So I had to focus on what I could control which was letting it all go. And starting over. And starting from where my feet were, and I just started waking up to the moments of everyday I never thought I'd have again. And that's all I need right now, the moments I never thought I'd have again- good coffee, yoga in the Park and maybe holding a loves hand while laying in the grass. That's it. Back to basics and that's all that really matters. Nothing else matters but simple small things. And I am just starting the rebuilding ... again. And its tiring but im grateful I get another shot at it.
Hell yeah. Love your perspective.
♥️
What it feels like to me is that our bodies carry the emotional effects of trauma not only from this life of ours but the absorption of our parents trauma and the generations before that in our DNA and if you subscribe to it, past lives. These are the emotions that couldn't be expressed at the time due to survival/safety etc. such as rage, grief, terror. But not only negative emotions but joy, peace, pleasure, desire. They are stored rather than expressed. When we start having "good" experiences such as getting sober or being actually loved, our bodies relax a little and that exposes the next layer of emotional trauma which initially we might use our old coping mechanisms to deal with. So from my point of view it isn't that people are failing, it's that we are slowly reclaiming our bodies free of stored pain. Knowing that that is what is happening can help not "relapse" or despair. But also what I have realised that for me a relaxed state after being sexually abused and neglected as a child is actually terrifying because it is so unfamiliar and I haven't realised how panicky it has made me until quite recently. But looking back I can see a very gradual process of peeling back the blocked emotions which at the time just look like "failures" to someone who has been conditioned to see herself as bad. It in my view is the very opposite - it's courageous in the persistence to keep growing towards health and love rather than settling for the type of conditions and relationships you initially received as a vulnerable child.
I feel like this is a big theme in my life. Sometimes I think it may be self-sabotage stemming from my first big had it/lost it experience. I had my dream job, touring the world skating with Disney on Ice. I was sexually assaulted at a night club in Buenos Aires I was at with some other skaters after a show. In the weeks that followed, I would start crying out of seemingly nowhere, or get really scared, or have a panic attack. I had never experienced mental health issues before this. I was a mess. I asked my employer if I could go home for a while to get therapy, and was met with "You have a contract. If you break your contract you won't be hired back." So I left. I didn't skate again for 20 years. I sometimes wonder if because I worked so hard for so many years to achieve a dream that didn't work out in such a horrible way, now when I'm "almost there" with any other goal I tend to sabotage it.
Kari, thank you for sharing this..:I know that feeling, like an experience was so big it imprinted and you’re therefore condemned to repeat it. Very familiar.
Heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing and Im so sorry this happened to you.
Two summers ago, I got my first big photo gig since the Year of our Covid had begun. We were between variants (although we were unaware), I had just invested about 5K in a new camera system (the most I'd ever spent), and I'd finally raised my prices for weddings (I've been a photographer for 25 years). They even commissioned a robe for the bride and she was so happy with it. I was feeling good. The wedding was great and I was really happy with what I had captured. Well, something happened when I went to download them onto my computer and not to get in the weeds of that, basically my card got corrupted and I lost all 800 of them. I let out a scream so wretched, my kids bolted from their rooms, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think. I've never experienced an unexpected death of someone close to me but I imagine it's a shred close. It took a lot of phone calls between bouts of panic/coma that I found a company who could possibly recover them. Fast forward: they did but I basically didn't breathe for 10 days. And get this, it cost to the penny what I had charged to shoot the wedding.
Suffice it to say, I ransacked every nook and cranny for the meaning to this. I shook my fist at God like, Haven't I paid my karma debt?? I thought about selling my brand new camera system and of course, I swore I'd never shoot another wedding again so help me.
Time is so stingy with her insights but generous of grace. I didn't sell my camera. I even said yes to another wedding but only because it was a friend of a friend and the venue seemed interesting. I didn't mention that my community showed up for me during that dreadful 10 days, showering me with hundreds of Venmo transactions in $5 increments over about a 24 hour period. With every little phone ding, I had to practice receiving. Perhaps that was the lesson or something like: shitty shit happens, you can strive or not, take up space or not, it doesn't matter because no one is immune, and sometimes you're held. It's how I respond and I may surprise myself. xox.
Holy hell Sondra, if I couldn’t love you more. This is your essence here: everything I love about you wrapped up in one perfect story. “Time is so stingy with her insights but generous of grace.”
I was a photo editor for 25 years. When you said you lost the entire shoot, my heart stopped for a minute! 😂 so glad they were recovered!
I had a husband (for 55 years) and now I am about to lose him. Guillain-Barre, Miller-Fisher variant, 3 months in ICU. Very severe case, extreme neuron damage. Yes, I am drinking. And thinking about a memorial service.
Oh Diane, that is so unfair.
So sorry Diane. This degree of loss is above and beyond. For what it's worth, sending you peace.
Do we ever really "get" a thing? I like this prompt, though I disagree with its premise. I don't think we ever get to have something and keep it. The thing shifts constantly... I "got" the job I wanted and then it wasn't what I thought it would be. I "got" into a relationship I thought I wanted and it turns out that wasn't it, either. To answer the prompt: I've gotten a so-called dream job and lost that, too, when interpersonal relations caused the whole project to crash and our funding along with it. But the binary thinking of have vs have not troubles me... isn't life about the striving, not the getting? Anyone else feeling contrarian today...? Regardless, thank you, Holly, for holding this space.
Lol I’m always feeling contrarian 😭 that said, I think spiritual or rational argument about having something is a whole long discussion—do I think we get glimpses of awareness or sense of having achieved something, where we feel we got it? yes, i believe that’s a real experience. Same as how I think the feeling of regression is very real, I gained ground, i matured, I developed, I back slid; I think denying we feel those things is like saying our experiences aren’t real. But in the context of what you mean: do we really ever get something that wasn’t already there? No. So agree/disagree (in the shortest and most reductive way possible.) I do very much agree that there is a super problematic trope in self-dev and recovery and spirituality circles (and in general culture) about the destination; the getting, that obscures what actually matters. I don’t know if I think life is supposed to be a striving?? Anyway there’s my three minute contest. 🫠😘
Hahah- I love this response. Thanks. You're right! I too often cast aside the things I've achieved and forget what it felt like before them. I wrote about this recently but, I have a hard time with endings. "Getting" something is scary because, well, what's next? In that way, I'm more comfortable thinking of life as constant striving, i.e., a constant pursuit of *something,* even when that something is as simple as "knowledge" or "enjoyment." On the regression part: I dislike that word. I think what is often called regression is growth in an unseen form. Because it doesn't look like what we thought it would, or how we wanted, we think it's a sign of failure. Really, though, it's just what needed to happen next. We actually can't go backwards: even depression is trying to tell us there's something here we missed. I guess that's a really sh*tty thing to hear when you're deeply depressed: like, buck up, kid, this too is a learning moment. But it's honestly how I feel and what I've experienced. Maybe it seemed like I was on a road to greatness, but I was riding a broken car. Or whatever the metaphor is. So when I crash, or when the road collapses, all it did was reveal the next step. Like, oh, I actually wasn't ready for that path because I lack the fundamentals. I'm rolling backwards downhill because I never had an engine, or brakes, or whatever... ok, well, I'll stop bugging your comments for today. Thanks again for a very nice brain prompt!
Ha...Chronic contrarian...I very good word!