The whole IDGAF attitude that alcohol gave me was irreplaceable.  Nothing phased me, nothing mattered and I could make any situation into a non-issue with a bottle or two of wine.  Caring was unnecessary.  Also unnecessary were a whole host of other emotions I knew I was numbing out, but also knew I didn’t need.  Giving up drinking made me feel, and this was, in a word, awful.  I was constantly and consistently questioning my own judgement.  Are my thoughts rational right now?  Am I overreacting?  Or is this how I should have been reacting the whole time?  My inner dialogue was wrought with skepticism and a general negativity, and I had no idea how to stop it- or if I should even try.

I once got a piece of advice about my inner dialogue: “If your best friend was in the same position as you are, would you speak to them the way you speak to yourself?”  This baffled me.  When I was in early abstinence, my knee-jerk thought was almost always the same.  “Why are you even trying?  It’s much easier to just drink.  That’s what you’re good at, so just give it up already.”  When I imagined myself saying that to a friend who was struggling to find some way to quit, I felt disgusted.  Never in a million years would I speak to someone I care about like that.  Why, then, did I feel it was okay to treat myself in this way?

How you speak to yourself is so deeply, inherently ingrained.  It’s simultaneously who you are as a person, who you’ve been and who you want to be.  It can be your biggest ally and your worst enemy.  You know this, because you do it every day.  You’re doing it right now.  To take a look at yourself, to admit that something you’re doing literally all the time is wrong and to take the steps to change it takes not only major guts, but a major time commitment.

For me, it was simple but incredibly tedious.  Run the thoughts through a filter: “Is this helpful?”  That’s it.  I took each thought, and asked myself whether or not it was helpful to me or someone else.  I tried to prioritize and categorize, eliminating biases and grey area where I could.  I reached out for help when I hit a speed bump.  It was simple, and oh so effective.

Beating myself up about a minor mistake I made?  Unhelpful.  Toss it out.  Don’t spend any more time on it.  Noticing my employee putting in some extra effort?  Great.  That’s being positive and grateful.  Spend as much time on it as you want.  Dwelling on something you want to change?  Unhelpful.  Maybe we could change that to a plan for how to change it, and what positive outcomes would come out of that.  Each thought went through the filter, and into its designated column.  It allowed me to monitor and rationally explore my inner dialogue.  Only by noticing the patterns could I begin to change the way I handled those patterns, and in turn how to change the way I initiated and entertained my own thoughts.

This inner dialogue business still gives me grief.  I’m far enough along into my sobriety that I have some semblance of what normal thoughts are, but I still find myself questioning my sanity when things get rough.  I realize, though, that this is not the problem of an alcoholic.  This is a human problem.  I just hadn’t given myself a decent chance to notice it before.  Quitting drinking, though, allowed me some better insight into the way I was treating myself as a whole.  The way I took care of myself, the way I spoke to myself, needed some changing.

The reality is that while quitting drinking is an amazing step, taking a good look at how you handle your thoughts can be an incredibly helpful tool when those cravings or bad days inevitably pop up.  So, give it a try.  How about now- what are you thinking?  And is it helpful?