[MajestyJo]

Monday, July 7, 2014

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Getting It All Out

Let yourself have a good gripe session.
From: " Woman, Sex, and Addiction"
—Charlotte Davis Kasl, Ph.D.

Get it out. Go ahead. Get it all out. Once we begin recovery, we may feel like it's not okay to gripe and complain. We may tell ourselves that if we were really working a good program, we wouldn't need to complain.

What does that mean? We won't have feelings? We won't feel overwhelmed? We won't need to blow off steam or work through some not so pleasant, not so perfect, and not so pretty parts of life?

We can let ourselves get our feelings out, take risks, and be vulnerable with others. We don't have to be all put together, all the time. That sounds more like codependency than recovery.

Getting it all out doesn't mean we need to be victims. It doesn't mean we need to revel in our misery, finding status in our martyrdom. It doesn't mean we won't go on to set boundaries. It doesn't mean we won't take care of ourselves.

Sometimes, getting it all out is an essential part of taking care of ourselves. We reach a point of surrender so we can move forward.

Self-disclosure does not mean only quietly reporting our feelings. It means we occasionally take the risk to share our human side-the side with fears, sadness, hurt, rage, unreasonable anger, weariness, or lack of faith.

We can let our humanity show. In the process, we give others permission to be human too. "Together" people have their not so together moments. Sometimes, falling apart - getting it all out - is how we get put back together.

Today, I will let it all out if I need a release.

Get it ALL out, don't wait and think about it and hold onto it for a while, when we stay stuck in our past thoughts and actions, we stay stuck. Pray and ask your God to take it from you.