Do You Suffer From Emotional Extremes?

I was talking to someone in recovery the other day who said this to me:

“Someone hurt my feelings the other day, and the next thing you know, I was feeling hopeless.”

That statement tells so much about the challenges many addicts face around their emotions.

This is true while still in addiction, and even in recovery. ​ It’s very clear that people with addiction have ongoing trouble both with regulating their emotional highs and lows and containing the intensity of any given emotion. ​ The majority of addicts start their use in adolescence. When young people turn to a substance or behaviour to change how they feel, they bypass the necessary process of emotional growth. ​ It’s not unkind to say that many addicts lack emotional maturity. It’s just the truth. ​

For example, there was a period in my recovery where I struggled with doing the things suggested to protect my recovery. My mind was working against me when it would tell me things like “You’ve worked hard all day. You’re too tired so you don’t have to go to that meeting. You need to stay home and rest tonight.” Or, it would tell me, “Just because you are having a lousy day, or someone pissed you off, or someone rejected you and you’re feeling really down, you don’t need to talk to anybody else. Just keep it to yourself”. ​

My mind tells me these lies because it is fueled by my distraught emotional states. As I begin to feel restless, irritable, or discontent, and I’m not actively working on my recovery, my mind goes to work to isolate me with statements like the ones above. This will begin the downward spiral into emotional or physical relapse. ​

I also remember times when I felt hurt by somebody and how I used those feelings to justify not having to take action to correct it. When the fact was that only one person hurt me, I still began to feel like everyone was mistrustful. In other words, my mind went from the specific to the general – in one leap. It wasn’t just about an issue with one friend, it became about my safety in the world with all my friends. ​

As was so accurately said, it’s easy to go from feeling hurt to feeling hopeless. ​

What you may not know, is that this is how infants and toddlers make sense of their experiences. When they hear a loud noise, the only thing that they think is that they are in danger of dying. If their mother is not paying attention, they immediately believe they are not important. ​

For many addicts who lacked a nurturing environment growing up, they can get arrested in these early emotional states. ​ Here is the biggest downside for us: we use our emotional states to determine our behaviour. ​ ​

Why is this a problem?​ ​

Because if addicts wait “to feel better” before they “do better”, they are setting themselves up for an unending vicious cycle of misery.

Instead, the pathway to solid recovery is to know what is the next appropriate action that you must take, whether you want to or not, that will lead to you feeling better. Alongside your self-activating behaviour, working on unresolved emotional pain is important.

As well, learning how to develop a nurturing parent voice within is key to building back what was missing early in life. ​ You have the choice today, as an adult. You can stay stuck in unproductive, child-like emotional states that keep you spinning your wheels. Or, you can decide that you will put in the effort to manage and regulate your emotions. ​

Knowing that if you simply do the things that feel useful, generous, and kind, the emotional benefit for you will be enormous – you will feel good. Both about yourself and your recovery. Transforming your inner emotional state is a choice you are in control of today.

​ Yours in gratitude,