FEAR OF THE UNFAMILIAR
To stop behaving in a certain way is to risk the unfamiliar.
--Jan Lloyd
Oft times in this journey of recovery, you talk with someone and they open up and tell you that one of the biggest fears they have in changing there life is that they don't know what they will do with their time. As well, they feel their "friends" will desert them. (What is a friend-honestly?) and they will have to start over again!
Start what over again? Hopefully not more misery for nothing changes unless something changes.
I know that when I hit my bottom and began to see a private addictions coach, I had the same fears I hear about today. When I was going to a treatment facility, I feared the unfamiliar. In making career changes and returning to school, I feared the unfamiliar. But I took a chance and it paid off. I passionately disliked my areas of my life at my bottom point and found the courage to change.
Old patterns grip us so tightly! Even when the behavior pinches us painfully, we are loathe to give it up. Its familiarity makes it tolerable, knowable, somewhat manageable, and far less scary than trying something new. However, we are truly the luckiest people alive because now we have a training ground where it is safe to try new behaviors. We can discard old, self-defeating patterns in the safe environment of these Twelve Steps.
We are on this recovery path because each of us wants a new life. We have grown sick and tired of the old ways that no longer work. And we have come to believe that change is possible if we look for it in the right place.
For me, the right place was actually places. As noted, it started with a specialist coach because I was diffrent and special and needed confidentialitydon't you know. Heaven forbid anyone know that I had problems. This approach worked for me. My coach got me to go to treatment, treatment got me familiar with AA, AA showed me the steps, the steps gave me a ME I could love and the journey was well underway.Today, it continues.
Over the last 15 years I have hit "issues" that caused me to seek what some may call "outside help". The "issues" were not directly related to my giving up addictions, and some possibly had to do with venturing into the unfamiliar. I have learned from my experience to seek "professional" help when I am dealing with ventures into the unknown and want to break old patterns and venture into unfamilar territory!
Am I selling something? Yes. Hopefully a message of hope, that things can get better when you, with whatever help it takes, can fight through the fear of the uncertain. There is a bright place on the other side. I know because I have found it and do work with others using my experience and training to help others find it.
As AA World Services has stated, over 80% of people who attend a meeting don't come back. The success rate of treatment facilities today is way below a poor big league batting average. I hope in my own way I can make a diffrence to these stats! That is my mission today, to make a diiference in the lives of some others, and to get there, I had to face my own fears of the unfamiliar. Thank god I had lots of help, including his!
I am in the right place today to let go of the old and try the new. My support is all around me. I will not fear. If I can help with some "free" chat and coaching, I can be reached through www.hopeserenity.ca.
Tags: Coach Creative Theory Hopeserenity.ca
