The Long Road To Emotional Self Reliance

I’ve been told I can be a bit extreme at times. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over doing, right? It’s usually to my detriment, even if I know that going in. Yet here I go again, diving in deep.

I’ve never fully understood why.

It’s been a little over a week since I had my last sips of caffeine. Which is a huge deal for me, because I would inhale caffeine in the form of fresh brewed iced tea. Lots of iced tea. Most mornings caffeine was the BFF I couldn’t wait to hook up with. My habit was supported by the availability of fairly good iced tea I’d get a convenience store I would intentionally pass by each day. It’s cheap and easily accessible, the perfect breeding ground for me to over-indulge excessively.

As much as I enjoyed the first few of the several tall cups of my beverage each day, at some point it would start working against me. There is a diminishing return on the amount of caffeine I’d often consume. For a beverage which is supposed to perk me up, at the end of the day I’d be anything but perked. Yet tomorrow I would repeat the same process.

As I’ve made my way through the expected brutality of caffeine-withdrawal headaches, I began to look at my relationship with iced tea. Why do I drink so much? Why do I need to drink it at all?

This line of inner questioning was reminiscent to a conversation I had with myself 23 years earlier regarding my alcohol consumption. It was a relationship much like the one I had with iced tea. Why did I need to drink so much? Why did I need to drink it at all?

The answer back then feels very familiar to the answer to the questions I’ve been asking myself all week.

Emotional mobility.

Both beverages offered me an emotional mode of transportation, a method of escaping from the silence of the present moment.

The present moment sounds idyllic, but it can be scary as hell sometimes. Because when it’s just you alone with you there’s no place to hide. It’s just you and your insecurities, facing life’s uncertainties, with your doubts and fears lurking in the silence. My liquid friends, consumed in great quantities, offered me a way to escape such potential discomfort, often taking me away from dealing with what is and propelling me forward to not have to face any dormant inner demons waiting to pounce in the silence.

There is an unfamiliar and uneasy peace that my short time without caffeine has brought to me, now that the headaches are gone. That unfamiliar peace is uncomfortable because habitually I’ve been relying on crutches and distractions outside of me to bring me the sense of peace which can never be found in a bottle of Miller Lite or even in a cup of some cheap convenience store iced tea. I’ve been a seeker, habitually on the run, one hopeful yet misguided tangent after another, running away from me and after a peace and self-acceptance which has always resided within me.

There’s no peace in running.

I was quite fortunate to be able to simply walk away from alcohol completely 23 years ago. After a two decades span of excessive over-indulging I just decided to take a break, honestly, just to see if I could. I’ve not yet found a compelling reason why I should restart. This significant decision was the foundation upon which two decades of personal growth and unfolding have been built upon.

I’ve gone through several extended periods without consuming any caffeine, yet I’ve always gone back. Even knowing that I prefer the decaffeinated version of me. That’s the power of habits, habits which are expressions of our accepted sense of self identity. My reliance upon stimulants and distractions is in itself an expression of an identity of habitually looking outside for what can only be found inside, a habit of questioning my own sense of emotional self-reliance.

Sometimes habits aren’t so easy to break, even if we know those habits are holding us back, even if those habits are standing in the way between who we are and who we know we were created to be. Sometimes we become so accustomed to being stuck we simply accept being stuck as who we are.

My caffeine detox has lead to a rather significant conversation I wasn’t expecting to have with myself, a conversation reaching down into the roots of who I tell myself I am and establishing the framework for where I decide to go from here.

It’s really not so much about the caffeine. It’s really about understanding what inside of me created the reasons I had a such a need for it.

Understanding our own tendencies and their root causes is the basis of all meaningful personal transformation.

We all deal with the challenges and pressures of life in our own individual ways. We each get to decide if our individual methodology is serving our highest self or perpetuating more of what we know we really don’t want.

Is there anything within you that you’re habitually running away from?

It might be an important conversation to have with yourself.

Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash