drglenndoyle

Grieve– and work your recovery.

The three basic tools that get us through every day in trauma and addiction recovery— self-talk, mental focus and visualization, and physiology and breathing— become especially important when we’re carrying grief in addition to our trauma or addiction struggles. 

When we’re hit with grief, it’s tempting to forget everything we know— including our recovery tools. 

When we’re grieving, the very last thing we want to think about is self-talk; or our mental focus; or our physiology and breathing. 

But we need to. 

Those are the building blocks of our recovery— and they’re more important than ever when we’re grieving. 

Make no mistake: grief is a delicate, dangerous time for survivors and addicts in recovery. 

Grief is the kind of thing that is going to try to convince us we “shouldn’t have to” focus on our trauma or addiction recovery— after all, we have other things to think about. 

Grief tries to tell us that we have “more important things” to think about than self-talk, mental focus, and physiology and breathing. That thinking about all that stuff might be all well and good on a “normal” day— but today we have way more pressing things to think about. 

Grief is consuming. 

And because it is consuming, the temptation is to let it consume the recovery work we’ve done to this point. 

It’s real important we not let it. 

Whoever or whatever we’re grieving would not want us to lose our recovery because of our grief over them. 

The good news is, every tool we’ve developed to support our trauma or addiction recovery— specifically self-talk, mental focus, and breathing and physiology— will also support us in managing and working through our grief. 

Self talk matters as much when we’re grieving as it does when we’re managing trauma responses. We cannot be in the business of telling ourselves our grief “doesn’t matter” or is “stupid” or disproportionate— any more than we can be in the business of telling ourselves our trauma “doesn’t count” or we should “just get over it” or “isn’t really trauma.” 

Mental focus matters as much when we’re grieving as it does when we’re managing trauma responses. Like trauma, grief tries to hijack our focus from who we are, what we’re all about, and how we can care for ourselves in realistic ways here and now— and it’s real important we not play along. 

Intentional breathing and use of our physical body matters as much when we’re grieving as when we’re managing trauma responses. Grief is a physically exhausting phenomenon, and if we are not caring fo our physical body, when we are breathing shallowly and quickly, when we are “armoring” 24 hours a day, we are no more in the position to manage or process grief than we are to manage and process trauma. 

Self-talk, mental focus, and physiology and breathing will not, on their own, dissipate grief, any more than they will dissipate trauma or banish addiction cravings and patterns. 

But it is virtually impossible to manage or resolve grief, trauma, or addiction, without paying attention to those basics. 

Do not get fooled into thinking that seasons of grief are when you get a “hall pass” to not use the basic recovery tools of self-talk, mental focus, and breathing and physiology. 

I understand— your whole nervous system wants you to do nothing but focus on this pain and emptiness you’re feeling. 

Believe me, I understand. 

But remember: you did not come this far, just to come this far. 

Your person or pet who left, would not want their memory to be associated with you stepping backward in your trauma or addiction recovery. 

Honor their memory by doing what you need to do to bolster your recovery work. 

Honor their memory by remembering the basics. 

Even if you’re crying so hard you can’t see the computer screen as you write. 

drglenndoyle

Recovering from a gut punch.

How do we recover from a gut punch? 

You know— something that happens to us unexpectedly, that seriously and negatively impacts our stability, maybe even our safety? 

Because there are all kinds of gut punches that are gonna hit us in the course of our recovery. 

We have to have some strategy for dealing with gut  punches that isn’t based on denial— but which also isn’t “just forget about recovery.” 

That is to say: we need to find a way to continue working our trauma or addiction recovery, even if we get hit with a gut punch. 

First thing’s first: when we get hit with a gut punch, we need to acknowledge we’ve been hit. 

We need to acknowledge exactly how much it hurts. 

We need to give ourselves permission to be impacted, to take a step back, and admit that the thing that just happened— the gut punch— maybe knocked the wind out of us for a moment. 

Many of our difficulties coping stem from us not wanting to admit we’ve been hurt. 

Many of us grew up conditioned to hide our pain. To never let anyone see that what they did affected us at all, let alone hurt us. 

Here’s the thing, though: we can’t realistically cope with or process pain that we’re not acknowledging. 

We can deny we’re hurt and pretend we’re fine, or we can realistically try to manage the pain— but we can’t do both at the same time. 

There’s actually nothing “weak” or “wrong” about admitting we’ve been impacted by a gut punch. 

The world might mock us for copping to our pain or vulnerability— but the world’s mockery isn’t actually something we need care all that much about. What we DO need to care about is coping with and processing this pain, so we can get back on track. 

Certain gut punches may seem to us to be so impactful that there IS no coping with them— they knock the wind out of us so throughly that we actually believe, in the moment, that the punch might actually kill us. 

There are definitely moments when we cannot imagine going on after being hit with certain gut punches. 

When that happens, it’s real important we not make permanent decisions based on moments of intense pain. 

The truth is, when we get hit with a gut punch, we don’t know how debilitating it’s going to be in the long term. 

We know how much pain we’re in right now, and we know what other gut punches in the past have done to us— but we don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get back on our feet, how long it’s going to take us to get back our wind back, after THIS gut punch. 

As with all things in trauma recovery, what we want to is to bring it all back to this moment. This one, right here. 

(This is really hard, by the way, when we’re reeling and hurting from a gut punch.) 

We don’t need to deny or disown the pain. 

We don’t need to shame ourselves for hurting or staggering or being vulnerable to this pain or this attack. 

And we don’t need to throw our trauma or addiction recovery out the window because we’ve been hit with a gut punch that hurts. 

The pain is real. 

But our recovery is more important than the pain of any gut punch. 

And the tools we’ve developed to work our recovery— self talk, mental focus, and body and breathing use— are going to be absolutely essential to coping with, processing, and recovering from the pain of this gut punch. 

Gut punches hurt. There’s no need to deny this. 

There’s also no need to sacrifice our recovery because something awful and unexpected happened. 

Breathe; blink; focus.