A Turtle Without A Shell
How I Got Through The Early Days Of Sobriety
The first weeks and months after I quit drinking I felt naked, exposed, and hyper-sensitized to every emotion and situation. Every reaction I had was forceful and outsized. I was jumpy, restless, and terrified. I wasn’t surprised that this was what sobriety felt like, raw and ugly at times. I knew the dreaded “feelings” would surface and that I would have to learn to handle them in a healthy way in order to stay sober.
For years, I had a hard, impenetrable shell protecting me from feeling the things I didn’t want or know how to feel. My shell was alcohol, and now I was lacking all of the security and assurance that the shell had provided me. Inside of my shell, I felt the hand of a loving parent patting my head and stroking my hair while saying “See, I told you, it would all be ok. Everything is fine now,” I felt safe. I felt calm. The truth was, I had never had that parent and never learned those tools to comfort and love myself. Oh no, was I going to have to deal with that too?
I did not anticipate that there were going to be stages of recovery and that I would not be able to tackle all of these difficult emotions at the same time as white-knuckling sobriety. Processing childhood trauma was not going to be part of the first phase. I would not be able to confront at once all…
