Tonight was group and more often than not, I leave feeling a little lighter, with a little more hope, and with a smile on my face. I am so grateful for these nights. One of the things we talked through and processed was quieting the mind. Sometimes when your head is full of stress, thoughts, worries, etc. it can feel like your world is spiraling out of control. Our counselor taught us a way that may help. She told us to visually extract and place our thoughts into different bins. Organize them like you would do when cleaning out a closet. A bin for the thought that needs to be addressed immediately, one for the thoughts that you can’t do anything about, one for the thoughts of things to do in the future, etc. I actually tried this that night, physically acting out me picking a thought up out of my brain and placing it in my imaginary bin. It was surprisingly helpful. I felt like after I had done it, my mind was racing less. My thoughts felt more manageable.

We also talked about not setting ourselves up for failure. I tend to be someone who has a million things I want to do and get done at any given moment. If you looked at my daily lists, it would pretty obvious how ridiculous they are. No way could one person do that much in one day. Even meth addicts would be hard pressed to complete those tasks. But at the end of every day, I still beat myself up over not having done all I wanted to. Another ridiculous habit I need to change. I need to start setting myself up for success. Make a list that is manageable, practical, and nice to me. Then, when I do get through it, I won’t feel like such a failure. This is my main goal this next week. To set myself up for success.

We talked again, about remembering the hobbies we used to do when our time and energy wasn’t consumed with alcohol and maybe picking some of them up again. I have a long list of those, but I will do one at a time. Manageable.