What You May Not Know About Emotional Sobriety
Have you seen the term “emotional sobriety” and wasn’t quite sure what it meant? Maybe you are like me— I had a vague idea, but wasn’t sure.
Turns out, it is a deeply meaningful and freeing practice of welcoming all that makes me human. It’s something I started learning in early sobriety, and personally, I’m not going to call it “emotional sobriety” because it feels too limiting. It was said to be coined by Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA, who was referring to his dependency on other people and situations for happiness and peace.
For those of us that aren’t in a twelve-step program, what does the current definition of “emotional sobriety” refer to?
Simply stated, it means being able to be comfortable with all of your feelings, without holding onto or letting yourself be defined by them. (To be clear, there are times when it is more healthy to distract yourself from emotions instead of feeling them--during traumatic experiences, or when you are having a strong urge to drink and don’t have the mental or emotional space to process what’s triggering it.)
I didn’t use a particular program to become sober, but I’ve used a LOT of tools, and the most powerful have been to learn how to welcome and release emotion.
These tools include:
The book The Sedona Method-- Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-being, by Hale Dwoskin.
In 2018, I took three months to work my way through the exercises in this book, and it played a key part in beginning to learn what to do with my feelings. It teaches a basic releasing technique that includes welcoming the feeling, determining which of three needs it stems from, and then allowing it to go. The book has a wonderful two page spread of emotions organized into columns that go from lowest energy to highest. I remember looking at the column on the far right, and thinking I could never get there.
Sitting and meditating deeply on passages I read in Yuval Noah Harari’s incredible book Sapiens, where he wrote about Buddhist philosophy,
It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good’ waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad’ waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful!
Another tool I started using is from Authentic Relating (AR). One of the foundational concepts in AR is that all emotions are welcome to be felt and expressed. By allowing them instead of repressing or suppressing them, they will naturally release. (Exactly what I learned in The Sedona Method.)The first six weeks of my AR training were led by a somatic therapy practitioner, who taught us that emotions can be metabolized through movement. I’ve started tuning into my body to see how it wants to move when I notice emotions that need to be allowed to work through me and be released.
I value my sobriety with my whole heart. It is about so much more than not drinking alcohol or doing drugs.
When I stopped using addictive substances, I gave myself the space and time to learn how to be the person I’m meant to be. To fully embrace this complicated human experience. This in turn, keeps me from drinking alcohol or using marijuana. That’s really what “emotional sobriety” is.
It’s a life-long practice, and whatever anyone calls it, I’m grateful for it.