(DON'T) Change the Way You Feel

Alcohol changes the way we feel. That’s its job. And it’s good at it. An A+ employee, really, at “Change the Way You Feel, Inc.”

Feeling lonely? Drink a little vodka at the bar and get the courage to talk to the handsome bearded stranger sitting in the corner. Now you feel confidant.

Feeling stressed? Drink some wine and forget that tomorrow all of your problems will still be waiting for you. Now you feel relaxed.

Feeling like you are unseen, unheard, and undervalued by your family? Drink some whiskey and eggnog and revert to your teenage self. Start demanding respect and recognition for your new promotion over Christmas dinner via tears and whining. Roll your glossy eyes when your brother's new sports car is the topic of conversation, and pour a bit more of your mood changer. Now you feel...well, empowered? Embarrassed? Hmmm, maybe Alcohol's job performance is slipping.

Feeling sick from and guilty about the drinks you had the night before? Alcohol, our employee of the month is here to help with a Bloody Mary and a temporarily calmed nervous system.

This guy is good. He deserves a promotion for his consistency and his dedication. He’s always willing to work, morning, noon, and night — and most especially on holidays and weekends. It’s like he was MADE for this. Oh - right, that’s because alcohol was made for this job — the job of temporarily changing the way we feel. This realization, for me, wasn’t so much an “Ah ha” but more like, “Duh. No shit” moment.

When I quit drinking, I reflected that changing the way I felt was a constant go-to pre my sober life. Living in the moment had little value to me (and it doesn’t for most of us who are wounded. We don’t want to be present to our pain. Why would we? We’re not masochists — we’re addicts). And besides, the present moment was never quite what I wanted it to be. I’m an emphatic person by nature, sensitive if not highly sensitive. So the “now” of each moment often felt too sad and heavy — or too painful and raw — or just too damn boring.

Sobriety, I thought, would take the place of alcohol by helping me change the way I thought alcohol was making me feel. I started to think that Alcohol perhaps had another, more sinister motive at his job than simply making me feel better.

With alcohol, feeling less stressed turned into stress less now, panic later.

Feeling less lonely now with the help of a drink, turned into feeling more lonely than ever when I woke up next to someone who was a placeholder for the real thing.

I’d feel seen by my family (but seen as a drunk asshole, not as an accomplished career woman).

And, of course, I’d feel less sick now by taking the edge off the hangover, and doubly worse tomorrow.

Clearly, Alcohol had to be let go. I had a slightly ironic and silly hope that that sobriety also worked for “Change the Way You Feel, Inc.” and soon learned that Sobriety actually works for “Be Here Now Consulting,” and its job is simply to keep me present. It doesn’t illuminate how I’m feeling. It simply makes me stay put, in the moment, until I can come to terms with how I’m feeling.

So, you can imagine how irritated I when sobriety wasn’t doing the job I was expecting. I assumed that firing Alcohol would make me feel so unbelievably free that I would never again have to change what I was feeling. In my mind, with sobriety in my employ, I would never feel lonely, stressed, undervalued, unseen, or sick again. Being sober, I told myself, would be like sitting under a tree with Oprah while eating an ice cream cone. God, that’s gotta feel amazing.

I was wrong. Dead wrong. Painfully wrong.

Ice cream in Oprah's backyard. What must that feel like?

My body, I discovered, was so conditioned to changing the way I felt that when sobriety said, “Don’t try to change. Just go with it,” my body was like, “Um, ya. Thanks but no thanks. I’ll take over from here.”

Enter Anxiety, who has a spotty employment history, and mostly works as a temp. He goes from one job to the next - never quite understanding his duties. Some weeks he works for, “Let’s Get Outta Here RIGHT NOW, LLC;” others he’s pushing papers for, “Dizzy, Weak, and Tired, Corp,” but he often gets board there and moves to “Irrational Thoughts Processing Center.” His favorite place to work though, at least when he worked for me, was, “Yes, You Are Actually Crazy,” or YYAAC for short. When he works for YYAAC, Anxiety is a master at making his clients feel like a straight jacket and a lifetime of medication is not only necessary, but inevitable (I think YYAAC must work closely with big pharma shareholders).

Anxiety made the biggest impact on me, however, when he was worked as a temp for “Change the Way You Feel, LLC” after Alcohol was suddenly and abruptly fired. Anxiety used different tactics than Alcohol of changing the way I felt, but I’ve got to hand it to him. He got the job done.

Feeling lonely? Anxiety will turn loneliness into complete fear, and will isolate you from friends, family, and colleagues.

Feeling stressed? Anxiety will turn stress into panic, and will send you to the emergency room with heart attack symptoms.

Feeling like you are unseen, unheard, and undervalued by your family?Anxiety knows what to do. He’ll turn your unworthiness into rage. All in a day’s work!

Anxiety, indeed, does a great job of changing the way we feel. It’s simply responding to what we used to want while we were drinking.

When I fired Alcohol, my anxiety thought it was doing the right thing by temporarily taking over Alcohol's job duties. But Anxiety is a bit of a hard ass. He never got the memo that I wanted to feel better, only that I wanted to feel different.

Fear is different than loneliness.

Panic is different than stress.

Rage is different than feeling unseen and undervalued.

Only when I realized that Anxiety was trying to do Alcohol's job was I able to finally be in the moment — right where Sobriety wanted me to be. I decided that feeling exactly as I was feeling was better than feeling worse. Not all change is good.

Now, loneliness is just loneliness.

Stress is just stress.

Feeling unseen and undervalued hurts — but they’re just feelings, and they’re temporary.

Only when I realized that Anxiety was trying to do Alcohol's job was I able to finally be in the moment - right where Sobriety wanted me to be. I decided that feeling exactly as I was feeling was better than feeling worse. Not all change is good.

And the good news is that all of these feeling can change. Not in a moment, but with time, and a commitment to healing their root causes. Now, as I’m going through the healing process, I’m happy to tell both Anxiety and Alcohol that I’m no longer seeking applicants to change the way I feel. I’ll stay right where I am until I’m healed enough to feel different.