I'm in rehab!
Okay, it's not really rehab. It's a sober living house, and I go to a therapy program during the day. But same difference.
I really hate living here. Everyone is so loud. They scream and yell and make such a big deal out of everything. I'm so hungry, but everyone's hanging out in the kitchen, so I can't go in there and get my food, because I don't want to bother anyone. But man, I'm really hungry.
I also have to go to AA. I really hate it. I have a lot of problems with it, but I'm too tired to enumerate them right now. Suffice to say it sucks, and we'll leave it at that.
(I have 11 days sober, though. So there's that.)
I feel like my life is changing so much, and I don't know if I'm ready for it.
Okay, this is more salient: I want to die, but let's not indulge that. It's symptomatic. Let's instead think about what it means. I want to die because I feel anxious, insecure, sad, hopeless, and despairing. It's valid that I feel that way, and I can sit in those emotions, but I don't have to take it to the extreme of dying. Instead, I can try to reason it out, allow myself to feel it without judgement, and see what's going on behind the pain.
1. I'm worried that people won't like me.
2. I'm worried that this situation will last forever
3. I feel that I'm not as good as other people
4. I feel that I don't have a future
5. I fear that people will end up abandoning me
6. I fear that I'm going to mess up somehow and this will make me a failure
Now that I've identified these thoughts, I'm going to try and talk back to them a little bit, starting with number one:
1. It's okay if people don't like me. Not everyone has to like me. I just need to worry about liking myself, and maybe being liked by the people who are important to me. I shouldn't be codependent, though, and I think I do have that tendency.
2. Factually, I know that this situation can't last forever. It can't. I'm not allowed to stay in the program forever, and I'm not allowed to stay in this house forever. Besides, my money would run out if I tried. I can't do it. Like it or not, something is going to change.
3. This is hard to talk back to. I feel like it's true, and that makes me feel insecure. But I think what I need to remember is that all I can do is my best, and other people aren't as hard on me as I am on myself. If I do my best, that's good enough.
4. I don't know that. This is a cognitive distortion called fortune-telling. I will have some type of future for sure, and what it is depends on what I do to make it happen.
5. I have no control over what other people do. However, I don't know for sure that they will abandon me. All I can do is love people and do my best to treat them well, and try to radically accept the rest.
6. I probably will mess up. This doesn't make me a failure, though.