Welcome to Enhancing Recovery Part 2.
I'm Dr.
Lynn Brown.
Today's topic is Shedding Your Secrets.
Each of us is carrying around information about ourselves we feel uncomfortable sharing with others.
These secrets remain so because we feel revealing them will change our lives.
Often we are afraid to disappoint others or to let them know that what we appear to be is not completely accurate.
We feel embarrassed about how we have dealt with situations and their outcomes.
And when it comes to sobriety,
It seems society as a whole influences our keeping secrets.
We are supposed to be able to stop ourselves from having our alcohol use affect our lives because a general societal opinion is that it is bad.
And you get little sympathy when trying to explain how it happened.
Society feels you shouldn't have allowed it,
That you ought to have been able to control it.
So the disappointments you have about life due to alcohol use fall on deaf ears when you want to share feelings.
Using alcohol is never viewed as having advantages.
Therefore you are not free to talk about the comforts it can bring.
You are not given adequate credit for your accomplishments if you have achieved them while drinking.
So you hide your successes,
Never letting them shine as they should.
Now is the time to change all of this.
It is time to be honest with yourself,
To free yourself from the emotional prison you have kept yourself in by never outwardly admitting how you came to use alcohol,
What it has kept you from doing,
Having and being.
You will feel better about yourself when you are free to grieve and then move on.
You have perceived the advantages of continuing to drink.
State them.
Don't be afraid that by recognizing them you will be promoting them.
All you are doing is being honest with yourself.
And by sharing them they will sound differently to you and begin to change the meanings they have had for you.
You have succeeded despite using alcohol.
How have you done that?
Take time to pat yourself on the back.
Take your time completing shedding my secrets.
These are my secrets about how I became an alcoholic.
How,
When,
Where and why.
These are my secrets about what being an alcoholic has kept me from doing,
Having and being.
These are my secrets about what I thought the advantages were to drinking.
These are my secrets about how I have succeeded despite being an alcoholic.
