Through a friend of mine someone spoke about their interest in emotions. Over time I’ve been given a lot of that by others around me. Of course I can identify with everyone since I went through the same things.
Emotions, our feelings of fear, anger, resentments, jealousy, sex, and a list longer than I care to go through can cost us our sobriety and even out lives. I know because I’ve been a witness to a lot of this. In fact my first sponsor and others shook me up early on in my sobriety and brought the truth about this home to me.
I’ve certainly been warned about the danger emotions pose for us and the beginning of the solution to these. As my sponsor often told me, to think with my head and not my heart. And as the old timers often would speak up and tell us to place the “I” over the “E”, the intellect over the emotions. I always remember one spiritual writer, who said that we needed to place sentries around our minds to keep emotions from rushing through the gates and taking control of them. He said that the most dangerous thing in the human condition was our emotions.
I remember one old timer, who used to drive me crazy every time he spoke. He would begin with the statement that attitudes are everything. They’re more important than facts, he would go on. He said that’s because they can change the facts. One of our defenses against our emotions are our attitudes. We can have and maintain a positive attitude or end up being pulled down into a negative attitude. Takes discipline and time to learn and practice this. I later began to learn just how right he was and had to change my mind.
Of course I started to try to practice everything I just said. Not easy to say the least. In fact one of my problems with all of this was my thinking, which is sometimes all over the place. And I would forget. But, as time went on, I began to get a better handle on some of these.
However something was still missing. And that was the spiritual aspect.
Reading several experts I began to get a better handle on the control I needed to my emotions. The first thing I learned was that the spiritual life was the only real answer because what is wrong cannot be treated, healed, or cured by psychology. It can only organize these things. The cure and the healing comes from practice of a spiritual way of life. That’s because the real cause of our emotional life goes way way back. Early on in our lives. In fact Bill W. actually wrote about this in the Eighth Step in the 12&12. When he wrote about the effect the unconscious mind had in discoloring our personalities for the worst and doing so much damage.
And there it is. The unconscious mind formed early on in our lives. What is hidden from us. What happened to us and affected us. That’s something we can never really find out, because it is long forgotten. However there is one element in the memory of what happened. Our emotions never forget. So, when someone says or does something, or some event comes up, our emotions awaken and rush into us and take over our minds and our feelings. We are no longer in control of our thoughts and often our actions.
And here is where discipline and spiritual action can help and begin to change everything. First of all I have to recognize in quiet moments that when I find myself overwhelmed by anger at someone I’m in the wrong place. I say I’m angry, but I have learned that may not be real. In fact I can go to the spiritual axiom in the Tenth Step, that whenever I’m disturbed there’s something wrong with me. The other person or the events are none of my business. I have to deal with me.
The other thing I have to learn is to have a prayer I can learn to develop as a habit, so that when I find myself suddenly rushed by my emotions I can actually ask my Higher Power to come to my aid and relieve me of the control of these things. Every time I can do this I begin to find the control these used to have in my life beginning to be relieved. I can find myself doing what my sponsor said. To begin to think with my head and not my heart. I can find myself developing a new attitude. A positive way of thinking and acting.
Why is this so important? It’s my sobriety I need to maintain. After all the BB tells of the danger of such things as resentments and anger. How they can actually cost us our sobriety and even our lives. Like I said, I have witnessed this too many times and I don’t care to go there. Besides I don’t want to live the way I used to live on a regular basis. Being too often controlled by my emotions.
Like the BB tells us, the spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Through these Steps and with the help of people just like ourselves, especially our sponsors we begin to change and to grow up. To become emotionally mature. Not easy, but do-able, if I will take the time to pray and meditate. To begin to practice these principles in all of my affairs. Takes effort and a real desire to stay sober and live this life I have been given. The gift, which made me reach a place beyond my wildest dreams.
Anyway I’ll stop here. I’ve gone far enough for now. But I’m grateful that someone thought about this. My thanks.