The "Data Point"

So, as I have mentioned before in this blog, lots of my blogging comes from the “This Naked Mind” course I am doing. It is a year-long course, with daily tasks and online group calls. There is an online community, where we are encouraged to share our troubles and our wins. It is mostly directed towards alcohol use disorder, but it deals with life in general.

One thing lot’s of us in this community are collecting is “Data Points”. In other circles, they are often referred to as relapse, laps, setback or bender. And they all refer to falling back into old ways and habits.

I have had plenty of them all, and over time they have become more and more troublesome.  And harder and harder to control. I have now understood some of the reasons for this. 

Instead of giving yourself compassion and self care, you give yourself harsh self-talk, on how useless, worthless, stupid, weak and how you actually deserve the punishment alcohol is. 

The new way is to take it for what it is, your brain has tricked you again for a myriad of underlying reasons, to pick up an addictive substance again. I have to try to be curious about why, and sit with the feelings that might appear.

This sounds fairly straight forward, but for me it is not. I often don’t know why, which feeling or thought to pick up, because there are so many. And often I find my willpower to stay strong just fails, wears out, or sadness becomes so overwhelming that I don’t know how to hide. One place I have found to hide is at the bottom of the bottle.

So last night I had a data point, and that was what I was going to talk about. But I am not game. Practice what you preach, yep, I know. I am working on it.