Stop walking into the wall!

Therapy last night went…almost as well as it could have. Thankfully, we seem to be back to normal, and there isn’t any of that uncomfortable tension or awkwardness between us anymore. Now, it’s just back to the regular awkwardness and anxiety. Hah.

Mostly, we talked about addiction, and what the fuck I’m going to to do once I’m not pregnant anymore. She read a couple of my posts, and we talked about those, too.

We talked about “surrendering”, and what that really means…and how it’s funny that I wrote an entire post about that…when she’s more or less been trying to get me to come to that conclusion for the past few years now.

On my post about surrendering, someone commented something that suddenly made things make a whole lot more sense. (Thank you!) They said how trying to control something you have no control over is like banging your head into a brick wall over and over, instead of just going around it.

And that comment really got me thinking about it in a new way. So we spent a long time talking about that.

How, for so long now, there’s just been this damn brick wall right in front of me!!! I can see it. It’s right there. It’s not that big, I can see my way around it.

But I’m not going around it. Despite the fact that, logically, I can just go around the fucking wall, I’m stuck behind it! I keep walking into it, trying to go through it, and being pissed off that this stupid wall even exists.

Why is this wall always in front of me, always in my way?!

We named the wall “addiction”. Hah. She thought that would be good. I think this wall metaphor is here to stay.

So, now I have this fucking brick wall of “addiction” right in front of me, and I’m so fucking stubborn and hard headed that I just won’t go around it. I won’t take a different path, and I’m just hellbent on going through the wall.

Has that worked for you? Has that worked for anyone?

Anyone make any good progress going through the wall, when you can quite literally just go around it?

No?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I told her that it’s like I know the solution. Logically, I see it. I know it exists. But I just keep trying to get around the wall in different ways. I keep trying to take it apart and rebuild it over here, or throwing something at the wall, or any of a million different solutions other than the very obvious one. Going around it.

Another thing that she said that suddenly made a whole lot of sense was when we were talking about AA, and going through every reason that it’s just far too scary to go.

Because anxiety is usually a driving force in my life, I’ll spend a LONG time thinking about something before I’ll do it. Trying to think of every potential outcome, everything that may or may not happen…trying to prepare for it, in a way.

But she said that the longer I spend thinking about it, the more comfortable I get with thinking about it, and the less likely I’ll be to actually do it. Because the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about it has felt like an action enough, so I’ll get comfortable there, and sort of feel like I’ve acted, even though I haven’t.

So, that made a lot of sense. And I get it. It’s really something I just need to either myself decide to do or not do. It’s not going to get any better or easier the longer I sit around thinking about it.

I’ll never not be scared of all the logistics. Which one would I go to? Which type? Do they sit in circles or rows? Would I stick out? Would people try to talk to me? Is that okay? And on, and on….and on.

Anyway, it went well, and I’m relieved and grateful that I did. Things are starting to make sense…hopefully…and hopefully, that means positive change can finally happen too.

My homework is to paint a wall. A brick wall. Like the one I’m just so sure I can walk THROUGH one day instead of around. So, that’ll be a laugh for us all once that’s done.

Don’t worry, I’ll share the joys of my artwork and take you along for the journey when I’m done with it. We’ll all laugh together. She also suggested that we start working through another addiction workbook, so I’ll start on that too.

In the meantime, I’m just going to keep working on surrendering, and keep trying to stop walking into that damn wall.

Because I’m really pretty sure that I won’t succeed at going through it.