Diagnosing your pain points and eliminating them is a process that is going to be almost as important as establishing habits of personal growth in your recovery journey.
Here is a quick breakdown before we dive in:
1) Pain points are the negative things that you struggle with in life, things that hold you back, things that are a negative drag on you.
2) Sometimes you are not even aware of your pain points, so we need to figure out what they are.
3) We need to figure out a plan to eliminate them one by one.
4) We need to execute on those plans and push through until we get results on meeting those goals.
5) We need to stay vigilant as we move into long term recovery for new pain points that may pop up.
What exactly are pain points?
Pain points are all of the negative things in your life that hold you back from being happy and content: resentment, self pity, toxic relationships, shame, guilt, and so on.
They could even be bad habits such as smoking.
This needs to be differentiated from when we are yearning for “one more thing” in order to be happy, as in: “If I could just have that car, then I would finally be happy in life.” The lack of that shiny new car is not a real pain point.
Some more practical examples would include things like:
1) Being stuck in a cycle of self pity.
2) Being out of shape and tired all the time.
3) Being overly jealous or constantly comparing yourself to others.
4) Being constantly broke, in debt, or struggling financially.
5) Being completely isolated and lonely to the point of despair.
6) Hating your job to the point that you obsess over it frequently throughout the day.
7) Being a heavy smoker, coughing fits, standing out in the cold to smoke, wasting lots of money on it, etc.
8) Being in the habit of complaining excessively.
9) Resenting someone excessively.
10) Refusing to forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made in your life and in your addiction.
11) Having unchecked mental health issues causing day to day discontentment.
Contentment is what you seek
Let me give you an example to think about:
Take the celebrity who seemingly has it all: Fame, wealth, power, and even a good relationship (at least on the surface). But we have all seen such an example where that celebrity “crashed and burned,” fell into depression, or even committed suicide. It seemed like they had all the necessary elements of happiness in place. What went wrong?
Pain points. Whatever the case may have been, obviously that celebrity was struggling with something that overcame all of that “happiness” and drove them to discontentment, depression, or despair.
Which brings me to my point: You can pursue happiness and contentment, and you may attain some of those goals, but if you still have pain points in your life, then you may not reach real contentment as a result.
You can be content as a fairly permanent state, but true happiness and joy are going to be peak experiences. If they’re not peaks, then you haven’t really felt them yet.
When I talk about pain points, what I’m talking about is trying to eliminate enough of these negative blocks that hold you back from reaching a smooth plane of contentment in your life.
The goal is to not be miserable. Chasing happiness and peaks will take care of itself–we all chase those. But reaching real contentment, and making it into a more permanent state, that is going to take some deliberate planning and effort.
So let’s make a plan, and then make an effort.
We are not always aware of our pain points
“Before you can banish your pain points, identify them you must.”
Unfortunately, we don’t always know what they are–even though they are right under our nose.
It is possible to be too close to the problem. For example, having used self-pity as a coping mechanism for so long that you don’t even realize that you are doing it, or that it is a bit overly dramatic, or that it is affecting you negatively.
Therefore, you need a method to become aware of and identify your pain points.
Let’s cut to the chase and get on with the suggested path here:
1) Journaling – writing your thoughts down every day will help you see trends in how you feel and what you are attempting to cope with over time.
2) 1 on 1 therapy – an objective and second set of eyes, especially professional insight, can be invaluable for this.
If you’ll note, both of these are in the suggested Introverted Recovery plan of action.
So other than the obvious method of just observing for yourself what is causing you suffering and discontentment in your life, my two main suggestions are simple: Daily journaling and 1 on 1 therapy. Simple and effective. These will both help you to see what is really causing you discomfort and discontent in your life.
Let’s make a plan
Once you’ve identified your problems, it’s time to solve them.
Pretty much every problem that’s ever been had has already been solved by other people before. Therefore, you won’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. You can do some quick research, or ask your therapist to guide you.
For example, let’s say that you have identified that one thing that is contributing to your misery is self pity. It is drowning you in sorrow and you seem to be bringing it on yourself, almost as a coping mechanism.
So let’s look at some steps that we could take to make our plan:
1) One thing at a time. Biggest problem first. Ask yourself: “What problem could I solve in my life that, if I did so, would bring me the greatest amount of relief, or make everything else easier?” Tackle that problem first, and focus on it exclusively until it is resolved. Then you can move on to the next issue.
2) Start your research with artificial intelligence. Go ask your favorite A.I. (such as Google Gemini) something like “What steps can I take to overcome self pity?” I just did exactly that, and it spit out 18 suggestions, about 3 or 4 of which you could turn into “action items” for your daily checklist. One of them happened to be journaling, btw, which is a core building block of Introverted Recovery.
3) If you happen to be doing 1-on-1 therapy (which I believe we all should be), then you should also addressing your biggest pain point with your therapist. They will undoubtedly have suggestions as well. You can then turn these into action items for your daily checklist.
If you are struggling to come up with a plan, then you need to ask for help. I believe you can get everything that you need from a therapist and a trusty search engine/A.I. The rest is going to be all about figuring out how the advice applies to you, creating an action plan, and adding the items for your daily checklist.
Execute on your plan
So you have identified the biggest problem in your life that is causing you grief, you’ve researched how to best overcome that problem, and you’ve made a plan of action and put the action items into your daily checklist.
What’s left?
Now you have to execute. You have to push through to the results.
You have to do the daily checklist, consistently, and persist with it long enough to see the payoff and the eventual freedom and contentment that comes along with it.
If you are getting overwhelmed then your daily checklist is probably too long.
We already have a modest amount of items on it in order to maintain our recovery. So when we take on an additional project like this, it just adds to the already existing list.
What you can do is to reduce it down to smaller and smaller “chunks” until they become automatic. Then slowly add in one more item on the checklist, so as not to get overwhelmed.
So in the case of self-pity, you might add one thing to your checklist, something like “set 1 phone alarm during my day that will remind me to stop and notice something to feel grateful for in that moment.” Then after that becomes second nature, you can add in the next item on your “self pity action item checklist.”
So it is one thing at a time, and sometimes just one action item at a time.
In other words, baby steps.
Small gains, but lock them in. Follow the plan, and keep moving forward.
Your life will get better and better, and you will protect yourself from relapse.
Vigilance against new pain points
The last thing worth mentioning is the idea that, after you have worked through and resolved your list of major pain points in your life, you may potentially have new ones that pop up down the road.
You will need a way to stay aware of these potentially new pain points, and a plan to deal with them.
1) If you get too complacent then a new pain point can sneak into your life and potentially lead to relapse, or in a lesser case, at least cost you your peace and serenity.
2) If you lose self awareness then you may not even realize that a new pain point is creeping into your life.
Therefore the key is to stay vigilant in both of these areas. You can do that most efficiently by:
1) Having a plan to fight complacency in your recovery journey.
2) Maintaining self awareness through journaling, therapy, or introspection.
Now go forth and eradicate those pain points!
Remember:
1) What is the one pain point that, if eliminated from my life, would make everything else easier for me?
2) Make a plan to overcome that pain point. Research it, ask for help. Focus all of your energy on it while maintaining your sobriety.
3) Keep pushing until you’ve conquered that goal.
4) Then repeat the process: ask the question again, and find your next biggest pain point.
5) Congratulations: your life will now get better and better.
“Devote the rest of your life to making progress” – Epictetus
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