Have you considered that expansion and growth feel scary in recovery?
If we aren't afraid most of the time, we aren't growing.
There's this idea that a lot of us believe; I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm pretty mystified by it. The idea is that somehow being on a recovery path will banish all fear and negative emotions from a person’s life. Guess what, it's rubbish.
If you are living a recovery life, you are probably going to come up against more fears than someone who is just coasting.
If you are living a life on The Stages Path you are going to become MORE sensitive to the emotions you feel, not less.
Somewhere out there it's as if there's this promise being made that if you go on The Stages Path, you are doing it right if you are only feeling happy ALL the time, never feel scared and can turn off negative emotions like a light bulb.
This is not what having a recovery experience is all about. On the contrary! If we are on The Stages Path, we are inviting fear to come - because we are stepping outside our comfort zone! We are inviting our emotions to rise, because we are clearing away all the things that prevent us from feeling them. This is the path of the recovery student- to be courageous enough to FEEL fear and keep going! To not cut ourselves off from feeling however they feel - and know that there is nothing wrong with them for feeling a down emotion! This is what it means to be a human being!
It's a journey within! If all you were was some annoying positive robot - life would suck. "When you numb your pain, you numb your joy" - being human, being open, being ALIVE means being ready to experience it all.NOW
And as we do, instead of trying to always "be positive" and beat ourselves up when we don't achieve that impossible goal, we accept that life is a series of ups and downs - and while it's true that we can't always control life, we CAN give what happens an EMPOWERING meaning. And by doing that, we start to take our childhood power back.
And we also begin to see that it is by FACING our fears that we grow. Growth, by definition, means we are constantly expanding beyond our comfort zone. And when we expand beyond our comfort zone - the natural experience is FEAR!
This doesn't make you wrong or a failure, it makes you HUMAN and it's totally normal!
Post a Comment Blogger Facebook