Day 114: Grievance and acceptance

I talked about “the switch” in my former post being the moment when the struggle of being AF transforms into acceptance and ease of mind. In a comment to that post Theresa Miller had a very important point regarding the process leading up to “the switch”. Theresa’s point was about acceptance and grievance.
You have your brain and you heart. In order to experience the switch both of them must accept that your life is better without alcohol. When writing your why-list you give the brain a lot arguments why you shouldn’t drink. Your brain will accept that you can’t drink by repeating that list and will listen to arguments like “alcohol is poison”. The heart, on the other hand, does not read lists - it processes feelings that enters it, like your liver used to process alcohol. The heart can not process ANYTHING if you push it away such as sorrow for not being able to drink. You have to let your heart grieve the loss of the fun and exciting things alcohol actually has given you in the past. Because it’s nothing short of a loss. Cry if you like, get it out of your system that you’re not the moderating social drinker you wished you were. (And if you ARE a moderating social drinker, congratulations, but this post is not for you and you can move on to other posts).
I think this grievance is the reason why it gets tougher right before “the switch” - it’s like this build-up is all the sorrow you need to process before your heart can accept that your life is way better without alcohol. You FEEL at the bottom of your heart that the positives of not drinking outweigh the negatives. You FEEL and KNOW that you have everything to gain by not drinking since both your heart and brain is onboard and fine with skipping alcohol. And that’s the moment when you experience the switch.
These tough periods of dissonance between your heart and your brain, right before the switch, is a wonderful opportunity to study how to ground yourself if you resist fighting the feelings and instead let them come head on. If you manage to connect your heart and your brain there is not much stopping you from accomplishing anything!
Onward and upwards, comrades!

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