Tag: abuse

Moving Past The Old Familiar Sting

Moving Past The Old Familiar Sting

On the sidewalk of a small strip mall I noticed a sandwich board sign in front of a liquor store. “Beer doesn’t ask silly questions. Beer understands”. Google “words of wisdom” and it’s highly unlikely that those words printed on that sign would ever come back in the search results. 

Perhaps they should.

As someone who endured a rather intense 18 year “relationship” with beer, those words on the sign struck me deeper than I expected them to. Because I know them to be true. Beer was a loyal friend, very predictable, and always took me where I needed to go, unconditionally. Even if where I was going was detrimental to myself. It didn’t question or evaluate what I needed from the relationship. It had a purpose to serve and that’s exactly what it did.

There is something powerfully reaffirming when you feel understood. When you have nothing to justify nor defend. When you’re simply accepted as is. Familiarity provides an intoxicating comfort, even if what’s familiar is undermining your own emotional well being.

Growing beyond the familiar is quite uncomfortable. Alcohol made it easy for me to not have to deal with my own deeper issues, the things on some level I knew I needed to work through but I never had the courage or willingness to do. I decided to stay stuck in the familiar instead of embracing the uncertainty of growth. 

Growth asks way too many questions.

In the hauntingly beautiful song “Hurt”, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails speaks of “the old familiar sting”, widely accepted as a reference to substance abuse, though others have interpreted this line Continue reading “Moving Past The Old Familiar Sting” →

Self Compassion Looks Good On You

Self Compassion Looks Good On You

Mom told us the day was coming, the day we would all stand before our Creator and be held accountable for the way we lived our lives. Awaiting us all will be either a stairway to heaven or a highway to hell.

Judgment Day. The ultimate exit interview. “Heaven or hell? What will it be?”

Many of us need not stand before our Creator at the end of our lives in order to be judged.

We already do this. To ourself. 

And we can make our life a living hell in the process.

In a world which can be quite cruel at times, we, too, can be just as cruel. To ourself. Because we know who we really are, don’t we? We know our flaws and shortcomings better than anyone, and no matter how well we may hide them from the rest of the world, we will never be able to hide them from ourself. 

And there is so much to judge, isn’t there? Our appearance, our weight, what we haven’t accomplished, what we haven’t become, what we drive, where we live, what we earn, the expectations we’ve not lived up to, both our own or the expectations of others. There is always something we’re falling short of if we just look a little deeper.

We can become quite good at paving our own highway to inner hell.

Sometimes we find ourselves embracing habitual patterns of our own emotional self-destruction without ever knowing why we do so. Sometimes we do so because we’ve simply Continue reading “Self Compassion Looks Good On You” →