Acting-Out Ideation
and focusing on the distorted reasoning behind it. Just for today, I choose not to succumb to this distorted behavior. Just for today I choose to express my new truth and my new freedom from past pain and insanity.
Often, I have been asked by friends and fellows in recovery, "How do you stay so level all the time? How come you don't have highs and lows like everyone else? What medications do you take?" The truth is, I do have highs and lows, but I take no medication aside from naturally grown herbs. Still, there are days when all I can do is just hang on tight and take refuge in the knowledge that this too will pass. Some days are more difficult than others, but not as difficult as they once were. As the result of my commitment to recovery and my research into the workings of the mind and body I have discovered certain truths. Now these may only be truths for me, but, through them, I have found an amazing level of recovery.
The first truth I discovered is that we are what we think about all day long. I tell my friends and sponsees that our mind is like a flashlight. Wherever you point the beam, whatever you choose to focus on determines your thoughts and your feelings. If you hold anger or fear in your minds light, you will experience all the feelings and consequences of that choice. Your blood pressure will go up, your heart rate will increase, you will feel stressed, anxious and you will feel out of control. This is a fact. It is also a choice.
I realize that it is difficult to change life long habits of acting and reacting to life's events, especially when most of our role models, our media, and our entertainment show such responses as normal and acceptable. Still, I wanted to recover and so I had to decide which was more important, living up to the expectations of others or changing my entire lifestyle and the ways in which I respond to life. It wasn't easy, and still isn't, but I do it because it is working...for me.
The second truth that I discovered, (and again, this is only my truth) is that the body is not the controller of the mind and the emotions, but rather it is the other way around. If I choose to focus in my fear, my body will produce those fear responses that I described earlier. If I choose to focus in what I don't have or in my frustrations,
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