Veronica Callanan

Fear is a universal experience, everybody feels fear very few of us talk about it. If we do it’s at a superficial level, people rarely open up about what they’re really scared about which is extraordinary because we’re all scared of the same things

• Rejection
• Being vulnerable
• Loneliness
• Other people
• Not being good enough
• Not being loved

And:

· Other people finding out we’re scared!

These fears are experienced by most people at one time or another and to some extreme or another; the problem is how we deal with them. Dealing with fear is something we’re all trying to figure out on our own and no ones asking for help. We all have to cope with this feeling and some of find inadequate methods of dealing with it, because fear is basically an uncomfortable and unpleasant emotion and we want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, we will choose what ever solution works the fastest. We often make the big mistake of choosing something that is ultimately destructive however because our need is immediate we are unable to consider long-term consequences – If we are frightened we want it to end NOW!

Here are some common methods of dealing with fear:

· Drinking alcohol

· Taking drugs

· Cigarettes

· Overeating

· Gambling

· Moving

· Inappropriate relationships

· Ignoring facts

· Doing anything to not be alone

· Rationalising reality

· Complete denial

The truth is we will never be free from fear, as long as we continue to grow we will experience fear – however what we can change is how we deal with it so it no longer disables us.

The universal law of life is that we are either growing or we are dying, if we aren’t growing then we are dying – if we are alive and have a pulse then we have to grow, which means we have to find more effective ways of dealing with fear. We are all here to be the best version of ourselves we are capable of being, our purpose is to experience this process, this means we will have to grow and we will experience the full spectrum of feelings that goes with that – the good, the bad and the uncomfortable.

So if we are going to become who we are truly meant to be then we have to accept that fear isn’t going to go away but understand its ok, we can deal with it, and we just have to learn how!

The first and most important part of dealing with fear is to admit: “I’m frightened!” trying to deny how we really feel or ignore the feelings or minimise them just enables us to stay stuck in the same uncomfortable place searching for temporary relief. Acknowledgement of how we really feel is vital, to deny our feelings can be deadly, literally it can kill us.

Ironically admitting the fear is far easier than trying to pretend you’re not frightened, although still uncomfortable there is a certain kind of relief in finally being able to admit your fear. And I’m going to let you into a little secret that may possible change your life; if it doesn’t then it will certainly make you feel a little more comfortable:

EVERYONE ELSE IS FRIGHTENED TOO!!

Whenever you’re frightened because you’ve been pushed out of your comfort zone and your doing something different, everyone else around you is probably feeling the same way. And if they can find a way to push through their fear then you can too.

There is only one way to deal with fear and that is to face up to it, to understand you are going to feel it but move forward anyway, it’s a paradox, the only way over it is through it. It’s the fear of………that is worse than the reality of……….always.

The trick is to start with small steps, if you’re reading this right now then you must have already had experiences in your life that were frightening to you (starting school, a new job, going on a date, social event). We’ve all done something, if we hadn’t we never would have left our mothers arms! If you were recall some of these events you may notice that you were frightened before all of them but you got through it right so you know you can! What happens is once we master something like for instance starting a new job we then ‘normalise’ it and forget how frightened we were because now it’s now a normal part of life.

If we did it once we can do it again.

So start small, choose a small step, something your frightened of doing and remember how you’ve been frightened before is situations but it has been ok. Decide what you’re going to do and think about the outcome positively; remember that other people are scared too so it’s ok, DO IT!

Observe how you feel.

Yes you were scared, but you survived didn’t you?

Now, you can do anything…………………..

It comes down to what we want our lives to have been about.

Wake up!

Your life is happening right now, it’s not going to start when you find the right job, house, partner, loose 10 pounds. These precious seconds right now are your life – are you going to make them count or are you going to fall back into your numbed state and sleepwalk through your life.

I often tell clients that early recovery – those first few painful months when you ‘wake up’ to who you are and what you have become is like the experience of when you have to wake up at 3am to catch a flight to Barbados because your going on your dream 2-week holiday that you’ve been looking forward to for ages. For those few seconds when the alarm goes of in the middle of the night in the pitch black when you are in the deepest of sleeps, dreaming about a wonderful fantasy you grope around trying to still that intrusive bleeping, your mind begins an argument with itself where for a few seconds you consider just closing your eyes just for a couple of minutes to experience that warm, comfortable, seducing lure of sleep again. Despite knowing you don’t have long to get to the airport their is that voice calling you to just shut your eyes and go back to sleep and everything will be ok. The pull is intoxicating nothing matters than the bliss of sleep, of unawareness. But of course you force your tired eyes awake and stand blearily in the shower with the excitement in your belly and the adrenalin beginning to pump through your veins because you know that very soon your going to be on a plane to Barbados and what a wonderful place that will be.

The first few months of recovery for an alcoholic are like the first few seconds of being awoken by the alarm clock. Even though you know where your going to is the most wonderful place you’ll ever visit, even though you know that this will be the best experience you have ever had and you have been waiting for so long for the time to come around, even though you know you would be devastated if you gave in and shut your eyes and woke up to realise you’d missed the plane, even tough you know all of this, there is still a strong temptation to go back to sleep and block out all of those possibilities and experiences for the sake of a few hours of nothingness.

This is what the alcoholic experiences in early recovery, for so long they lived half asleep, half aware, missing their lives and now finally the opportunity has arrived for them to be fully awake, fully conscious to their experience its very tempting to go back to sleep, this is because recovery is hard and painful at times, especially the beginning. Even though Barbados will be great, the getting their can sometimes be uncomfortable, painful, irritating and inconvenient. The driving to the airport, carrying bags, queuing at security, airline food, cramped seats, all of those things we would rather do without but we put up with them because of the destination.

The destination is our truth, our real, authentic selves, living out loud to the fullest being who we really are.

And becoming the best version of ourselves we are capable of being.

Who wouldn’t want to visit that place?

There was an article in these months Red Magazine that I can’t let go by without commenting on.

I read it with complete disbelief; it was tucked away in the magazine, no big deal, a commentary piece by a journalist on a subject many readers could relate to.

Drinking, getting drunk, being hung-over.

What’s the problem?

It wasn’t that what shocked me, it was the complete normalization (and acceptance) of the abnormal.

The denial of the author, (editor and possibly readers) that they were innocently writing about something as harmless and irrelevant as say; adult acne or bloating, or ‘shock’ the effects of too much chocolate cake was staggering.

‘The curse of the 48-hour hangover’ like this is some niggling little quirk that one must accept as one increase’s in years.

The author describes sending out emails to friends saying she’ll be off their radar for a couple of days because she’s going out drinking that night and excepts to be hung-over for at least 2 days after?

Hel-lo?

She also describes her younger years where a consistent diet of alcohol and cigarettes (spritzers for lunch, shots and whiskey for tea) was normal and gleefully capitalised on (one bar considered her such a lush a cocktail was named after her).

It’s not her drinking I object to it’s the complete load of B*****ks she’s implying in her article.

This isn’t normal behaviour, this is serious and dangerous alcohol abuse (don’t ask me to quote statistics but I will if you insist) paraded out as a life style challenge.

The article goes on to mention how she and other women try to cope with; anxiety, depression, paranoia which result after their use of alcohol.

There is nothing normal or ok the behaviour this article is describing. It is colluding with the mass denial and deception this country is in around its alcohol use.

For those of us who have a problem with drinking and for those of us who know someone who has a problem drinking but who isn’t admitting it, we are all taking part in some kind of mass deception.

If I’ve learnt anything in my 5 years as therapist then its people doesn’t always present their truth on the outside, it is often hidden inside of them. Often their insides and outside don’t match.

The deception is our relationship with alcohol and how we justify it.

The deception is our devotion to the effects of alcohol and what we are prepared to loose, compromise or lie about in order to get it.

The deception is we are all colluding with each other and drinking abnormally and dangerously whilst calling it something else. (Exactly what this article did).

The deception is we prefer the manufactured feeling it creates because we’ve forgotten how to create feelings we crave organically.

So we have normalised abnormal drinking.

Alcohol abuse is the purpose of their business.

I’m at huge risk here of sounding like a pious, reformed drinker who believes any form of fun with alcohol is sinful and devious and should be outlawed at once for the sake of our souls or something.

Forgive me if I do. Because that isn’t my intention and there is nothing wrong with alcohol in moderation.

But sometimes I feel like the little boy who stood in line to watch the emperor parade his finest robes to his people that had been specially made by two con-merchants (drinks industry, politicians?) who spin the message that the cloth is so special, so fine that only really clever people can see it, to the stupid it is invisible. Of course no one dare admit they can’t see anything because they don’t want to appear stupid or different to other people, so they all lie and exclaim how fine the robes are. So when the emperor is marching in these new robes he is actually naked but nobody dares tell him.

Except one little boy who points and says ‘but his not wearing any clothes’.

So I’m hear pointing saying you/we have a huge alcohol problem that everyone is pretending is ok and is normalised to such an extent that no one can see how naked we are.

I was coming back from London and picked up the Evening Standard to read on the train, I came across an article about Meg Matthew (formally married to Noel Gallagher from Oasis); she was talking about her new wallpaper line and her life in recovery. Apparently last year after a trip to Ibiza she realised she had a problem and checked herself into rehab to get help. It was interesting reading her story because in many ways she’s had such an amazing life, rock and roll lifestyle, parties, famous friends, rich, successful, pretty, she basically had the best this world had to offer and she still wasn’t happy.

She spoke of her dissatisfaction and unhappiness, in particular just not feeling ‘good enough’, although she says she doesn’t regret it most of it she says she’s lucky to have a second chance at life.

Whenever I read of a celebrity who is getting sober I relate so much to what they’re describing. My life was as opposite to Meg’s as it’s possible to get, there was absolutely no glamour and no rock stars to speak off. So that part I don’t relate to in fact I used to envy. Yet here is a woman who supposedly ‘had it all’ and was still not happy, still felt dissatisfied and not good enough which is exactly how I felt.

It seems that it doesn’t matter what you have on the outside, if you feel empty on the inside then nothing can change that, all the money and glamour in the world just highlight the incongruence of your ‘insides and outsides’ not matching, and just how painful that is.

I remember feeling worthless, no confidence, unattractive and my friends told how attractive I was, how any guy would be lucky to have me (like Meg I couldn’t get a date for love nor money, and had resigned myself to singleness). I knew they meant it and weren’t just being nice as they were genuinely shocked that I could feel that way about myself. But it didn’t matter that they were incredulous and my lack of self belief, it didn’t matter how many people told me how great I was, or pretty etc, I didn’t feel it myself, I didn’t feel good enough and there’s something about believing that about yourself that makes it manifest itself in your reality.

Because I felt and thought badly about myself, I became that person. We are what we think we are.

No wonder we use alcohol to numb that.

Am I an alcoholic?

That’s a very good question.

Are you?

In all honesty, there is no straightforward answer to that and whichever ‘expert’ or professional you speak to will give you a totally different, if not conflicting answer. This is because there is no scientific way of measuring this, it really is an opinion. Alcoholics Anonymous, for instance, will let you make up your own mind. No one diagnoses you. Doctors and other addictions professionals have other ways of concluding an individual may be an alcoholic or not.

It is, in our opinion, fairly easy to diagnose. What follows is a description of the traits of an alcoholic, and if they fit you, then you may have to come to the conclusion that you are an alcoholic.

Firstly, and we can’t emphasis this enough, ordinary people do not think about their drinking.
It rents no space in their heads.
Period.

This means if you have spent some time on the internet looking for solutions for why you drink the way you do and have ended up on this site reading this page, then the answer is definitely yes.

You have a problem.

Alcoholics or problem drinkers know they have a problem.
They know something is most definitely wrong.
It’s a nagging feeling that won’t go away.
They are vaguely aware that they drink too much but have loads of excuses and reasons for why that is.

So, by the sheer fact you are reading this, you know there’s a problem right?
We’ll go further.
Alcoholism has nothing to do with alcohol.

No, really.
Are you surprised?
Alcoholism is about the way you think.
Let me explain.

Alcoholism is a state of mind, a way of thinking and being that is so uncomfortable for the individual that it is expressed in how they drink.

Which isn’t normal, because alongside this state of mind is a physical allergy that means when alcohol enters the body of an alcoholic they respond differently to other people. They lose the power of control over alcohol; something else takes over and they find it extremely hard to regulate or stop drinking when they start.

The mind and body work against any intentions they may have of not wanting to drink.
An alcoholic is so uncomfortable in their own skin that they will always return to alcohol to ease the discomfort in their own minds (and souls), and once they start drinking the physical allergy kicks in and they find that they nearly always drink far more that they intended.
The common misconception is that it’s how much you drink and how often that makes someone an alcoholic.
Not so!

Certainly, in most cases alcoholics drink far more than is acceptable and on a more frequent basis than ordinary people, that’s for certain. However, you can be an alcoholic and drink infrequently; it doesn’t necessarily have to be everyday.
What differentiates a binge drinker or heavy drinker from and alcoholic is how that person thinks.
We have created a culture that has normalised abnormal drinking – we call it binge drinking, and everyone seems to do it.
Not all of those people go on to become alcoholics, however. Many will naturally regulate their drinking as they mature or the circumstances of their lives change and they find they have no desire to drink at abnormal levels anymore. Others, despite becoming more mature or their lives changing, will still, whenever they have the opportunity drink far beyond what is reasonable.
What is reasonable?
The recommended weekly allowances for an adult male are 21 units a week, spread over the week and not all in one night. For a woman it is 14 units. A unit is the equivalent to a small glass of wine or half a pint of lager*. If you drink consistently over this amount you can expect to have some kind of mental health, physical health, emotional, financial, and social consequences.
Most people are surprised at how low this is. Because so many people are drinking way beyond acceptable levels, we have normalised the abnormal.

And the biggest excuse that most people give for drinking way more than is good for them?

Everyone else is doing it, so it must be ok.
Wrong!
An alcoholic will find it easy to hide amongst binge drinkers because they drink the same way. What makes them different is what’s going on inside of them or behind the mask.
Pay attention, we are really coming to the crux of the problem now; this is the most accurate description of an alcoholic we can give you.

An alcoholic just feels different than everyone else, and not in a good way. It’s like they were born different; some people have described it as looking at the world through a glass screen, watching everyone else get on with life in a way that they just can’t seem to. It feels like being born without the instruction manual for life, and whatever you seem to do it never works out in a way that seems to satisfy or fulfil you.
Alcoholics always have a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction and emptiness, and they are always looking for something to fix that feeling. Alcoholics tend to believe that if they get the right partner, job, house, or car it will bring them the feeling of satisfaction and happiness they crave.
They are always looking for something outside of themselves to make them complete.
And what happens?

Temporarily, these outside changes fix that hole inside of them. Everything seems like its going to be okay, but it’s always just temporary. It escapes them again, it’s like sand running through their fingers, they can never seem to hold on to it. Just when they are almost there, when they feel like they finally have the thing that will make them happy, they lose it and they revert back to their old feelings of dissatisfaction and emptiness.
In addition to living life in this unsatisfactory way, alcoholics also experience a lot of fear.
Fear is probably the defining characteristic of alcoholics.
It’s fear of everything and nothing; it’s always with them and they spend a lot of time hiding how they really feel from everyone around them.
An alcoholic will very rarely be able to tell anyone close to them about the ‘fear’.

They are scared of what people might think of them.
They are frightened of not being good enough, of being found out, of people not liking them, of failing. An alcoholic will do whatever they can to hide this fear to the outside world, and they even find it hard admitting it to themselves. They are so used to living with this fear that they can’t remember what its like to be without it.
So you can see that when an individual feels this way on a consistent basis, it becomes so uncomfortable for them that they will do anything to change it. Alcohol does that for them. In the short term it removes that sense of discomfort and uncomfortableness and for a short while you feel like everything is okay. You feel happy and unafraid, like you fit in with the people around you; the glass screen separating you from the rest of the world has been removed.
And then it goes away.

It was only artificially and temporarily induced, courtesy of alcohol, and you are back to being the way you always were, still searching for whatever it is that will make you feel better (feel complete).

You can see then, that alcoholism is an internal problem rather than an external one. That the problem arises from how someone thinks and how they feel, and that drinking is only a symptom.
You may argue that other people who don’t drink to excess also feel that way, and you’d be right. The difference between them and you is that their feelings don’t express themselves in drunkenness the way yours do.
Pay attention, though – look around you. Notice how other people express their internal dissatisfaction through unhealthy relationships, overspending, gambling, sex, moving, food, etc. All that behaviour is just a way to deal with uncomfortable feelings.
If you have read this far, then chances are that you have read something you have identified with, that intrigues you.
Unfortunately, alcoholism doesn’t usually get diagnosed or recognised until someone’s drinking is way out of control, causing massive amounts of damage in their lives and the lives of other people. The reason for that is because people diagnosis alcoholism by amounts people drink, and this is just not the case. If you can recognise the traits, if you can identify your problem, then you can get help much earlier. The truth is that this condition, this way of being and thinking, won’t go away just because you want it to. Our experience working with thousands of alcoholics is that you can’t think your way out of it and you certainly can’t do it alone.

It comes down to this: how much longer are you prepared to accept living this way?
You may have read this and thought,
‘Yeah, I identify with some of that, but it’s really not that bad.’
Hel-lo?
Are you really prepared to accept that in your life?

Are you really prepared to accept less than you deserve?
Do you want to look back on your life and see that you settled for 70% or 50% of what you were capable of?
Are you prepared to live through one more day feeling the way you do, when now you know there’s a way out?
Now may be the time to get really honest with yourself.

Don’t settle for less than you deserve; www.beataddicitionnow.com

This has killed me my whole life, up until fairly recently I wasn’t aware that it was killing me, the lies i told myself. Then i read a book that changed my whole life, if your intrested i’ll reccomend it to you, the theme of the book was ‘living your truth’ when i read this, it was like being struck with a thunderbolt. There was no lying to myself anymore from that point. Not living my truth. up until that point my whole entire life had been a living untruth, and it was killing me. Once we uncover thqt knowledge deep inside us, its very difficult to ‘un-know’ it. Well you can, you just have to drink a lot of alcohol and a whole bunch of drugs to stifle that internal voice. You know the one i’m talking about right? if you don’t i wouldn’t bother reading any further. This will be of no intrest to you.

The lies i had been telling myself were because i wasn’t living my truth for the first 27 years of my life, i knew this on a deeper unconcious level, but was powerless to do anything about it. Which is why i ranaway from myself for so long. Its absolutely intollerable for any human being to not live their truth, if we choose not to (and yes, we always, always had a choice) then we have to work pretty hard to bury it. The reason I did this, the reason I see other people do this is because living your truth is hard, it really means going against the herd, saying uncomfortable things to people, making difficult choices. Those things in the short term don’t always seem attractive to me, in fact they look decidely unattractive because they seem to offer pain, such is the illusion because there is very little pain in living one’s truth and so much in a life time of living a lie.

It is also such a dreadful shock to realise that we are complete masters of our own destines, that everything we have, do, become is a result of what we are inside. it is sucha tremendous responsibility, i feel quiet sickened with fear at the weight of it. The relisation that i can’t blame or justify or rationalise or excuse my lack of……..my failure at……my circumstances, whatever. I am at cause. Never at effect, although i can try convincing myself otherwise at times. its just so exhausting, being responsibile for oneself, it’s madness to think that we weill settle for a lifetime of dissatisfaction rather than make a little bit of effort. Goodness, can i possible be that lazy?

So look around your world and notice how people continue to choose to lie to themselves and how they accomplish this, we do this with drink, drugs, sex, gambling, rampant consumerism, spending, celebrity worship, constant pointless activity it goes on and on and on…..and you can see the dissatisfaction and fear in the eyes of the people doing it. You know what i’m talking about right? Doesn’t it make you shudder to think about it? Because you recognise yourself? Living a life of being true to yourself, is the challenge we face as human beings, when we know this we can’t unknow. We can only choose.

And this is why i drank and why I drink no more. Because the lie will kill me quicker than the booze ever will.