Emotional Sobriety

What is emotional sobriety?

It is your emotional balance in recovery. When it is in a state of disarray you will be restless, irritable, and discontent. This is the state of being that precedes a physical relapse. Obviously we want to avoid that.

How can we achieve balance in this area of our life? There are a couple of things you can do to help maintain your emotional sobriety:

1) Meditate daily - Most people pay lip service to the idea of meditation but very few actually close their eyes for 10 minutes each day and get really quiet with some purposeful meditating. This is really hard to do if you are not in the habit of doing it but the payoff can be tremendous. This can help "center" you and quiet down the incessant chatter in your mind. If you are emotionally out of whack then you really must consider trying this.

2) Helping others - If you want to know how to solve all your problems, try helping other recovering alcoholics for a while. This works wonders and can help you put your own emotional state into perspective as well. When we reach out and help struggling alcoholics, we realize just how good we've got it in our own life.

3) Personal growth - When you set goals for yourself and start growing on a personal level, this has the effect of smoothing out your emotional life. The reason it does this is due to the incredible boost in self esteem that you get from setting and achieving your goals. Most will underestimate this as being not relevant to emotional sobriety but in fact it can be the biggest key to your success.

Purposefully create a new life for yourself and your emotional balance will take care of itself.