HALT

Hungry, ANGRY, lonely or tired…what happens next? I often have people come talk to me about what they consider a failure. Failures can be small or large but I always ask the question, where were you on HALT? Were you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? When any of those exist we are more susceptible to not sticking to our plan of recovery. It may not be that you go back to drinking/drugging but it could be that you got angry or overspent and that shame smacked you in the face. You were uncomfortable in your feelings so you used another coping behavior in order to change the way you were feeling. The reality is that if we pile up shame, guilt, etc. the need to cope gets greater and the ways you cope get more serious, requiring more numbing.

Please know this isn’t an original thought this is one of things that Alcoholics Anonymous gave me. But it is one of the tools in my toolbox that I pull out often to gut check myself and others.

Blessings….

Your Emotional and Addiction Recovery Coach

Direction, Destination…..

I had to spend time in the car today so I was spent that time listening to an Andy Stanley’s the Senior Pastor at North Point in Alpharetta sermon called Destinations. Highly recommend it! In Andy’s gently confronting way he described how we can plan to go to Florida. We can pack, rent a house, get money from the ATM, pray about the trip and get on the car going North on I-75 and go in the opposite direction of our goal/destination. I find this to compare so true for addictions. You want to “not use, eat, control, fill in the blank” you go to meetings, you talk to your friends, you take classes, etc. But when the urge to use comes, you are standing there with the choice to go North or South which way on the interstate do you go. Recovery is so much about using the tools. You have to use the tools daily to get you on the road in the right direction and then keep you on the road in the right direction. Addictions are so insidious they are about daily reprieves. So often we make to 6 days of decisions that move us toward the goal but then spend one day moving in the opposite direction. Those choices become more and more devastating to us, our credibility with ourselves and with others. Then the shame and guilt horse show up and ride us that much further North on I-75.

What action are you taking today that moves you closer to your destination? Recovery is one day at a time, one choice at a time……