WTF Is Going on? Mindfulness = Emotional Sobriety

What are you feeling right now? Really feeling?

Can you look underneath that feeling and identify another? Can you take the time to let that underfeeling dilate and express itself?  The degree to which you can do that might be an indicator of your emotional sobriety.

Long before we had the term “mindfulness,” the elders of early AA talked about “emotional sobriety.” For a long time, I assumed emotional sobriety meant just not acting out. Active and newly sober alcoholics do such crazy stuff, fomenting drama like a dishwasher with the wrong kind of soap, spewing it onto all who come in contact with them. Bad relationships, bad communication, bad decisions, bad consequences, and back reactions to those consequences: we dig our trench of pain and isolation ever deeper.

Not indulging in that stuff, I used to think, was the key to emotional sobriety. Self-restraint.

Of course, I was wrong. When we tap the wisdom of the 12 Steps and god’s guidance, we actually outgrow these behaviors. How? By learning to notice WTF is going on, WTF we’re feeling, and WTF we’re telling ourselves that is not necessarily true.

A long-distance friend, 13 years sober, recently Marco-Poloed* me that she’d been asked to speak for an hour at a large AA venue — but had yet to commit.

“I don’t know that I can offer a positive message,” she said. “I still struggle with feelings; sometimes I can’t tell what’s real and what’s my feelings. I struggle with the scary kind of sadness; I get irritated by petty things; I feel resentments. I do have a lot more peace now than in the past and I do know what the solution is, but it’s not picture perfect.”

I promptly Poloed back, “Speak! Tell them exactly what you just told me! You don’t even THINK about all the trauma you’ve overcome because you’ve overcome it!”

The testimony to my friend’s emotional sobriety is twofold. One is that she knows she’s struggling, she can give names to her emotions and is always on the lookout for her part — i.e. 4th column / her side of the street. The other is the beautiful life she enjoys, helping people via her profession and working on deep trust in her marriage. “Picture perfect” is simply not compatible with being human.

The term “mindfulness” is associated mainly with Buddhism and meditation. Meditation opens the space to notice the thoughts our brain is constantly churning out while we intend to detach from them. Every time we notice a thought has waltzed into the spotlight and seized the mic to start telling us what to pay attention to, we cut the amp and gently escort it offstage. This happens again and again. Gradually, we get to know the wizard behind the curtain, the monkeybrain constantly ushering these acts onstage. We learn its tricks and are not “hooked” by the thoughts, worries, and imperatives it generates.

Out in life, we can practice this same process. When we feel put on the spot, inadequate, awkward, angry, needy, infatuated or whatever, we can detach from the thoughts that drive these feelings. We can see which performer has nabbed the mic and unmask it as a feeling rather than objective truth.

This process is never seamless. It’s never easy, but the lifelong work of doing this stands at the core of sobriety. Feelings present a reality all their own: INTERNAL reality. When we can distinguish that INTERNAL reality from some form of objective EXTERNAL reality, we are practicing emotional sobriety.

To do so is a struggle for everyone, but especially for us as recovering addicts. For decades, usually during parts of life when our non-alcoholic peers were honing this skill of sorting what was on the table in any difficult situation, we did the opposite.

We swiped everything off the table with one simple move: choosing to numb.

When we choose to numb, to take the edge off, or to ride a destructive feeling, we choose NOT to seek WTF is actually going on. We choose self-centeredness, navel-gazing, and all the coping skills developed when we were kids navigating in dysfunctional families. “Let’s just run with this faulty tool again,” we say. That’s why many alcoholic addicts continue to behave like children well into old age.

I myself practice meditation only sporadically.  I realized this morning, though, that I do practice a form of morning centering with daily consistency.

Two and a half years ago, I adopted Alice, a deeply traumatized puppy. She’d been abused by cruel owners who eventually dumped her and her littermates in the Rio Grande desert to starve, as most of them did. Every morning, Alice would awaken in terror of absolutely everything, including me. So I would spend a few minutes each morning holding her on my lap, giving her scritchies and kisses, murmuring and telepathically telling her she was loved. I would focus, focus, focus on this message:

“I love you, and I will keep you safe.”

Alice has indeed grown to love me and feel safe, to be strong and happy when not triggered. However, she’ll never let me abandon what I now call her “medicine.” Each morning she sits directly in front of me while I fiddle with my phone or laptop, waiting permission to jump in my lap. I realized only this morning as I focused on our message that I was connecting with my higher power as well, that the love went both ways: god loves me as I love Alice.

The key is that each morning, she asks that I take the time to open my heart. Once it’s open, I feel what I’m actually feeling. Right now, that’s a lot of grief — for the loved ones I’ve recently lost. Tears come. Countless other feelings are in the mix, and I become aware of them. Without this practice, I would proceed with my day on autopilot, numbed by busyness.

To be awake takes practice, but it’s the key to a rich and genuine life.

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*a video chat app