# Recovery

what I value most in a relationship are, in ever-shifting order, humor, empathy, intelligence, understanding and surprise.

“Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and... See more

“Young man, do not forget to pray. Each time you pray, if you do so sincerely, there will be the flash of a new feeling in it, and a new thought as well, one you did not know before, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is education.”

preoccupied attachment — always scanning for proof we’re loved, always bracing for abandonment. We’re so used to checking the “supply line” to feel okay — whether that’s alcohol, a person, or constant external validation — that we forget we can carry the reassurance inside us.

I remembered that I actually did put this person on a way-too-early amends list, one that I'd thrown together with a few weeks of sobriety and zero program. I put them on the list, not because I did anything to them but because I simply wanted them to like me. In my delusional Dale Carnegie fever dream, I'd win this friend and influence the person... See more

“Don’t insist that what happens should happen as you wish, wish that things happen as they actually happen then your life will go well.” — Epictetus

my ideal self doesn’t exist.

I thought the self-loathing, anxious, ‘not enough’ aspects of my personality were integral to who I was. But they weren’t. Turning to alcohol to cope with that inner critic was a bad decision.

I have always struggled with emotional regulation. I was subject to runaway feelings, scary racing thoughts, from a pretty early age. Scary things that I was not able to dispatch on my own. Fear was such an overwhelming feeling for me, I was afraid to be afraid, if that makes any sense. My imagination produced incipient catastrophes from relatively... See more