The Greatest Lesson Mental Health Struggles Has Taught Me
Hello to you all, I thought I would just post something today about what I have learned from my 17 and a half years of recovery from alcoholism and abuse
I have spent the last 18 years dealing with being in recovery. Many unexpected things have happened to me, during this time.
When I got to 17 months sober I had a complete nervous breakdown and began to realize that although I was sober there were now many more struggles ahead of me
I have had to deal with depression, extreme anxiety, and 2 types of PTSD
My life prior to recovery was one long car crash
For many years I have had to face my deepest fears and deal with a lifetime of healing from systematic emotional and mental abuse
And the most important this I have learned is this
Most People do not believe they are strong until being strong is no longer a choice
I hope this helps some of you because what we do here is hard, if it was easy everybody would be doing it
We need to be strong and work for a long time before we get paid
We usually have to fail before we succeed
We have to learn many new skills
We have to juggle our lives with our dreams
We have to deeply believe in what we are doing
We have to be strong because being strong is what it takes
Barry
Recent Comments
35
Thanks for sharing your story, Barry!
I, too, have a few years in recovery, 16 in February;)
Just this last weekend, in of our Vets shared his story. PTSD and brain injury.
The blessing of recovery is that we keep growing and the awareness that a drink or drug only makes things worse.
Stay connected, and continue having Faith! My recovery groups are my extended family, much like WA!
Don't isolate and help others! Keep doing the DO, Barry!
I'll keep you in my prayers, Brother!
Barb
Yes, drink and drugs only intensify the 5 senses, and you go down deeper, versus, stop digging,
and more and more, rather baby stepping is fine.
Climb out of the hole, and become whole,
Merge with your divine right, not meaning that you become a god now, for that was how the trouble began.
Again, that child must merge with the present you, and together you will be overcomers.
Drinking and drugging is only a symptom of a deeper problem.
Recovery helps us get in touch with the past demons and then use them for the good.
We learn to change our thinking.
Selfishness and self-centeredness is the major problem of all people, but drink and drugs make it so much worse.
Depressed? Get out and help someone who is really less fortunate and stop sitting in self pity. :)
Barb
Mr. Barry,
Something disturbing happened when you were quite young and unable to deal with it.
You did not even have the vocabulary to express how you felt, and unfortunately, there was no one with caring and kindness, which are real love in action to really listen and help you.
You lost a part of you in the shuffle, of other people who should have valued you, protected you, comforted you. Maybe someone was a narcissist, and it was all about them and their image. Nothing about you.
Without a healthy adult to protect your precious self, how long you tortured yourself in shame and pain, how many years does it take to look yourself in the mirror, eye to eye?
And all this struggling still to grow up, and pick up that defenseless little boy, which is really a stranded version of yourself, stuck in the past somewhere. He needs you and you need to offer your broken heart, brokenness of life to him with a vow of protecting him, helping him to heal, helping him to learn life skills, and helping him to play freely and start to enjoy and involve in the childhood that got missed.
To talk to that younger you. And wait until he in his child way, he shares something back with you. Slowly as if he were you, develop
communication with him. Break through time will be a moment when he wants to share a hug with you, then you can hug him, and ask if it's OK to scoop him up in the most loving hug you ever gave anyone.
Enjoy the sweetness and pure giving. You are giving yourself all that was taken away. On the other side, you are receiving all that was taken away. The two of you are becoming one. One beautiful joining together of taking a huge step into one healed being, and now nuture and care for your inner child, which truly is in the safest place ever, within your heart!
Something miraculous will have happened, pain and sorrow, feeling of loss are being replaced with joy, an inside job, peace, ability to rest well, sleep well. Years of not sleeping, can snore away. Itis OK to rest, you are safe. You never caused what happened to you, and no need to pay interest on it any more.
Let it GO. Put Stop Payment on any energy it want to drain from you.
The price you've already payed is final payment!
Miracles happening will close and seal all those false negative memories and cut away their roots that can no longer bind you, or even find you to try to bind you! Yes, you will now be unrecognizable to those dirty birds.
Time for all that work you gel together in the deep and true beginnings of healthy relationship with yourself and with others.
Suzay
"Learning to love and accept yourself, is the greatest love of all".
Thank for sharing your solution, Suzay.
Barb
It's a gift to Barry, and to anyone who needs it.
Just become still, in a meditative expectant state,
yes Barb, and heal thyself by allowing yourself to encounter, exactly what you said, The Greatest Love of All.
So, I'll quote it here, because you are perfectly right.
This is The Solution,
"Learning to love and accept yourself, is the greatest love of all".
Now if anyone wants to heal and erase those wasted years, apply the ME ditation to thyself.
Thank you, Barbara. Your words made the gift complete.
Suzay
We can only take the lessons from our past, but it's over and gone.
Taking each day as it unfolds is all we can do.
Yes, no seances with the dead past.
Release comes from forgiveness.
The first one to receive forgiveness is yourself.
Do not practice an idolatry "I" kind by not forgiving yourself.
You will waste your life if you do not learn how to forgive, self and others.
"Make it your habit not to be critical about small things."
Edward Everett Hale - 1822-1909-Author-Historian
Let the little stuff go and be known by others for this!
Much Love and Much FREEDOM is found in Much Forgiveness.
Suzay
Thank you for sharing, Barry! We all have some type of skeleton in our closet. Facing it in most cases is the hardest thing, especially if you are going it alone.
In case nobody has told you today, I'm proud of you. Stray strong brother.
Canty
Your honesty and transparency is very helpful. I know it will help others. I have mental health issues in my family and have lost a brother to suicide.
Life is a challenge. Being there for each other is what can make a difference.
Thanks for this.
Keep pushing Barry!
Barbara
I, too, lost a brother to suicide, back in 1973. Heroine got the best of him, and he checked out.
Why do I have a passion for Recovery?
He was the reason.
Thanks for sharing, Barbara. It's a loss we never fully get over.
Barb
Thanks for sharing. You are right. We never get over it. And so we press on in hopes we can make a difference to someone.
Barbara
"From our pain, comes our purpose" , right? Helping others helps us as well, Barbara.
Take care.
B
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Hey, Barry. This is not only a powerful post, but it really hits home to me. You could have easily been describing my life.
I should not be here (and I mean that 100%), except for pure grace, and the fact that there is a plan for my life. There is no other way for me to see it, and I have definitely tried!
I would almost bet that everyone here who perseveres has had the hellish struggles in life necessary to forge one into the machine of strength and determination and endurance that you have to be to do this.
But I dare say that nobody knows the struggles of an addict like an addict (I don't call myself that anymore, because I'm not)!
And the addiction is just the biproduct of what we had to endure which led to it, as you well know.
I am so glad to have gotten to read this. As much as it made me cry like a prepubescent school girl, it made something powerful rise up inside me, and I think I will soon share my story on here, too.
You, my friend are a powerhouse of purpose in this world!! I hope you are aware of that.
Thank you again, and let's stay in touch!
Craig
"We have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind" .
B
Boy, is that true! It is like recovering from insanity.
Power, love and a sound mind, a not insane mind. Greater is He...than the other one who is ...hatred, deceit, punishment, insanity, while in the 5 senses, you cannot rise above the 5 senses.
Verily!
Yea man! This is why there are megalomaniac insane people?? Are they really people, or just demons in flesh suits driving a flesh suit? Not my kind of "people". There must be a reason why they hide in the darkness, and put a bought souled out looks like us on the outside. Oh my, your scales are showing, get some lotion!
You know the devil gave the world to his children, and they run it.
And they are not the brightest bunch...
Thank you, Craig, and you are right. Glad you know, makes me feel a little bit safer because you count for something in power against lovers of darkness.
There are a few of us left with eyes that see and ears that hear!