Get Over It

When you first go to recovery meetings, if that is what you choose to do for your plan of recovery, you might hear a lot of people saying things like,

"As soon as I came to (insert twelve-step program), I felt at home,"

OR

"I never had a family of my own until I came to ..."

For some people that may be true, but for MANY people in early recovery, the rooms of a twelve-step program can be just as daunting as being social in the "outside world."

After all, we generally use to avoid being uncomfortable in any kind of relationship (including with ourselves), and recovery meetings are asking us not only to have a relationship with ourselves, but with others as well.

HORRORS, right?

Wrong...

While you may be one of the many people who feel "like an outsider looking in," when you begin any sort of recovery, try to keep in mind the following:

YOUR WAY WAS WRONG

and

YOU MOST LIKELY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WAY IS RIGHT.

No matter where you "land" yourself in early recovery (twelve-step programming, inpatient treatment, therapy, white knuckling it alone, etc...) you are going to feel awkward and uncomfortable.

That is the reality of what recovery is like...

HOWEVER,

you are also going to get through it over time, unlike your active addiction, which, given continued use, you would NEVER have gotten over.

Try to remember in your early days (and in more "blossomed" recovery when you are having one of those paranoid, "off" days), that even though it may feel like you are an alien in a strange land, that others have walked in yours shoes and that no matter what anyone says, they, too, have been "lonely and frustrated."

They too have "gotten over it."

Just for Today, try not to compare your insides with what you THINK you see on other people's outsides.