Introverts have a unique challenge in addiction recovery: they don’t get the benefit of daily AA and NA meetings.
Those daily meetings serve multiple purposes, but one of them is that the person who is sharing with the group is able to talk about their experience, strength, and hope–which is going to involve their emotions and feelings.
So this is a shortcut of sorts, an “easy button” for people in 12 step programs–just go to daily meetings, and processing emotions becomes somewhat automatic. If you regularly share with the group, and your peer group there expects you to share with them, then you are being held accountable.
In effect, you don’t get to hide your emotions. You have established a system that holds you accountable to others, and a way for you to share your emotions, and thus you have a way to process your emotions.
Of course that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but in effect it’s still true. Daily AA is a shortcut to getting a “helping hand” with regulating your emotional state. It may not be perfect, but it works for a lot of people.
In Introverted Recovery, we are going to forego those daily meetings, and therefore we need to make up for this deficit.
We need to find another way to process our emotions, and protect our emotional state.
The tools of Introverted Recovery
Let’s consider some alternatives. Because we do not want to rely on social solutions, we need to utilize every possible alternative resource that we can.
In my experience, there are 4 things that really helped me with my emotional state in addiction recovery:
1) Journal writing – This is huge. How does it help, you may wonder? For one thing, sometimes people are not aware that they are angry, for example, or that they are experiencing fear, or that they are lashing out at someone because they are actually sad, and so on.
Writing in a journal can help you get to the root causes. It can help you to see what is really going on inside, what the truth of your feelings really is. Anger is masking something, what is underneath it? You are uneasy lately, what emotions are driving it? What are the root causes?
Writing forces you to think on a deeper level. Why? Simply because, as you prepare to write something down on the page, you have to “sharpen your thoughts” before putting them to paper. Thus you explore your thoughts deeper so that you can explain them in more detail.
No need to use specific writing prompts. Just dump your brain on the page and write down what is going on with you lately. Do an “update about your life” and write it on paper. Write for 10 minutes or so and do it every single day. Make it a daily habit and this will improve your emotional state.
2) Exercise – In particular, cardio exercise that gets your heart rate up a bit can work wonders for your emotional state (consult your doctor first). This is particularly effective if you are experiencing unwanted, negative emotions. If you are frustrated, angry, sad, devastated by something, or completely overwhelmed–get out there and move your body. Walk purposefully until you are huffing and puffing, and then push yourself and walk some more. Your blood is flowing, endorphins are kicking into gear, and your emotional state cannot help but improve. The more extensive your workout, the more you will turn down the volume of those negative emotions.
3) Meditation – If you ask 100 people in recovery if they meditate, almost all of them will say that they do. But then if you clarify with them, and say “but do you actually sit in absolute silence, eyes closed, for 10 minutes or more, on a regular basis?” they will say “whoa, whoa, whoa….that is intense!” It turns out they just read out of their “Daily Meditations” book once a day or something similar to that.
Now don’t get me wrong–there is more than one way to meditate. But if you really want to improve your emotional state from meditation, then you are going to have to put in a serious effort. When I started to learn how to meditate–really meditate–it was hard. It felt totally foreign to me, to sit in silence and just let my mind do nothing at all, to not constantly stimulate it with a smartphone or a screen or coworkers or anything at all, and to deliberately do this for more than a minute or two. I think the most I got up to was 20 minutes.
If you do some research, you will find that serious meditation has the power to unlock serious benefits, one of which is regulating your emotional state. Honestly, l couldn’t sustain the practice, and I eventually opted for what I consider to be a decent substitute for meditation, which is cardio based exercise. Obviously it’s not exactly the same, and the benefits are slightly different, but again–real meditation is hard. But the benefits are definitely there.
4) 1 on 1 therapy – This is a no brainer when it comes to processing emotions, because a trained professional is helping you identify your emotions, work through them, problem solve, and so on. It is taking the benefit that people in AA meetings get in terms of emotional help, and concentrating that into the hands of a professional therapist instead. You will get a lot of other benefits from seeing a therapist as well, but you will definitely get help with processing your emotions as well.
Not only will a therapist help you to work through specific emotions, but they will likely also teach you how to better process your emotions going forward. You may be able to learn techniques that will benefit you for a lifetime.
You can’t afford not to address this
One final word–you pretty much have to do this.
An addict or alcoholic does not just accidentally pick up their drug of choice, relapse, and throw away their recovery.
Before you relapse physically, you relapse emotionally. The addict says “screw it, I’ve had enough, I can’t take this any more, and I don’t care any more.” That’s an emotional relapse. You reach a breaking point, and then you give yourself permission to relapse.
You must protect yourself from this. You must take an active role in this. Be proactive. Take the steps now to strengthen your “toolbox,” and protect yourself from the threat of an emotional relapse.
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