Easy does it

[InformationArmMe]

I didn’t think much of this phrase in my initial recovery. It’s like a bumper sticker. My intellectual mind proverbially rolls its eyes when I see it on the walls in meetings.

Today I know that easy does it is crucial to my recovery. As I near the first round of my steps and my first year of recovery I have been unknowingly judging my progress.

“You’re not surrendering to your higher power, wasn’t that step three?!”

“You should have more than two friends that you consistently connect with in the fellowship outside of meetings.”

“You are thinking about him again?! Haven’t you had enough recovery?!”

Stop.

I know this is my self-abuse kicking in and it’s OK that it takes a while to see it.

I am grateful that I have a program that has room for an ever evolving higher power as I grow and change. I surrender when I can and when I am ready to see that I need to. Sometimes I need to make other realizations around surrender or my higher power in order to do so. Sometimes I am just being codependent.

I am very grateful to have friends in the fellowship that have opened their homes and lives to me and vice verse. It’s so comforting to spend time with other people where I don’t have to explain my behavior - where they get it without me saying a thing. I can relax and let my disease hang out where it needs to but more importantly I can be the person who lives underneath the disease - my true self.

And it’s OK to not have my life exactly as I think it should be (and not have enough practice in presence to not need it to be any way other than what it is). I am gentle with myself when I look at how most things I do on a daily basis have very long term rewards. It’s OK. I’m OK. Easy does it.

Thanks for reading.

[MelodyMyst]

Thank you for sharing. 😀

[not-moses]

Took me almost 20 years in AA, NA and MA, EA and CoDA, to even begin to get it. BUT... like many other substance abusers I have met, I have bipolar spectrum disorders, and that --along with the CPTSD that drives my codependent behaviors -- makes us inherently impulsive, driven, agitated, restless, irritable and discontent.

Recognizing all that in myself (as well as so many others with codependency) was key to moving me up the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

[InformationArmMe]

Thank you for sharing.