Posted by Steps to Recovery on February 12th, 2013
Being in a space of feeling resistant is such a beautiful thing. Painful and scary, so many emotions and thoughts. That feeling inside that makes it hard to do/listen to/see/feel/even just THINK about certain things means something. It actually means a lot…Feeling resistant means that there is great opportunity for learning and growth if you just step out of your comfort zone and open yourself up to possibility.
All people experience resistance in their life, and with addicts it often manifests powerfully in response to recovery. Recovery work is really hard! It takes a lot of energy and strength to fight the good fight and put down the substances. In early recovery I had resistance to everything. Especially recovery related. I even had resistance to my resistance…
“I am not being resistant!!!”
A lot of the time, though, I just didn’t even want to get up and take care of myself, let alone leave the house. Everything in the world just felt so uncertain and sometimes, it all just felt really dumpy. So it was really hard for me to just get up and do what I needed to do, it took a lot of determination to face the reality of my situation and make myself accountable for fixing it.
Later on in my recovery journey, I still faced the aggravation of feeling resistant . Not so much about actually getting up and taking care of myself in general or going to my recovery groups and classes, but about more specific things. One good example is I had a lot of resistance around participating in the classes that were a part of my program that addressed financial learning and responsibility and actually doing the homework, which dealt with figuring out my bills and debt. I had not a lot of debt in particular, and it was mostly all old but I just didn’t even want to look at it. It was depressing. Not only to think about having the debt to begin with, but how to actually deal with it in the present and fix it.
And even now that I am done with my recovery program and living a much larger life than fit into what I worked through a few years ago, I still encounter resistance. Especially when I am stepping out of my comfortable routine and into the unknown zone.
“Oh, I have been given a new task to accomplish for my job, I have an order for a product that I just began making, what if it isn’t good enough, what if I don’t impress the people I am working for or the person who ordered from my small home business…I just don’t want to even do it!”
Feeling resistant is a normal part of recovery and life in general. Resistance shows up for me all the time. And that’s ok! I hope it always does, because that means every step into that resistance I take, every little bit I make myself vulnerable and open myself up, I am growing and learning and becoming a bigger person. And accepting myself a little bit more. And that’s really important stuff!
How do you experience resistance? Are you able to face it and embrace it?
