How do you recover from something you can’t quit?” Sobriety from alcohol and drugs is easy in once sense because you don’t need them to live. But what does sobriety look like from food? From sex and relationships? From money?
After 34 years of recovery from process addictions, Dr. Tracy Zemansky has discovered that successful recovery hinges on continuous self-evaluation. All of our life experiences can be seen as an ongoing feedback loop. If we pay attention to the impacts of our actions, thoughts, feelings, and relationships and how these change day to day, week to week, and year to year, we can often discover just what we need. Strict rules are not the problem, and an absence of structure is not the problem, but rigidly being either high structured or highly unstructured can lead one to extreme rhythms, which tend to put one at greater risk for relapse.
Recovery is like, “A teeter totter. There’s always going to be some shifting around to get balance. I don’t know anyone who’s always perfectly in the midde.” In this we can learn that a recovery and sobriety process can take many forms for many people, and probably should take different forms for each individual person as they move through life stages and an every shifting world.
As always, we are reminded of the vital importance of staying in community, staying active and involved caring for the body, taking some sort of regular personal inventory, and the value of, “Putting one foot in front of the other.” Dr. Tracy also reminds us to spend time with people who are at least a little further down the path than we are.
“People who are a few steps down on the path, whose lives are at least comfortable a good amount of time, if not all of the time, and who seem to be living with some degree of grace and integrity, those are the folks that give me hope. There’s people who have gone through whatever it is I’m going through, and I need to find those people.” - Dr. Tracy.
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Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!
Dr. Tracy Zemanski can be reached in Santa Monica, CA, and at https://www.drtracyzemansky.com/ and would also be happy to hear from you!
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