This Rodeo feels different

I've been in this rodeo plenty of times before now, trying to lasso that alcohol bull and take it out of the arena.  It's always felt almost in my grasp, I get the rope around the bull, and then it busts free.

(My apologies to those who disdain rodeo events, but this is just an analogy...easy for me to visualize and I've never actually been to a rodeo...)

This time I feel like the bull is there bucking around the arena and I'm riding on my horse, trotting around and watching it.  I don't want to use brute force, sheer willpower, to get a hold of it.  I want it to buck itself out, give up and docilely walk itself off the arena floor.  So I'm standing back and observing it and it's behaviors, watching myself in the process.

A lot of bloggers have blogged of shame and I've always skipped over those words thinking they don't apply to me.  I've thought "I don't really have any shameful drinking moments".  I've had a few but already forgave myself.  The time I got tipsy in front of my parents.....well, it was my birthday.  The few times I've been clearly buzzed in front of my son and he asks "don't you remember what you said?" or "wow, you must have been really tired last night!"  The fights I had with my husbands that were alcohol induced.  I've forgiven myself for most of those, after all, it took two I told myself.

Anyway, I don't have too many drinking moments where I did something shameful and I acknowledge the ones I did have.  I have dealt with those.  The best way to move on from those is to keep at admitting I have a problem.

But when bloggers talked about dealing with shame, I didn't give it much thought.  This time, however, when quitting drinking, all the shame in my life is bubbling up.  It's shame I feel about myself not even related to drinking but may be why I want to tune out that shame by drinking.

I've been sleeping pretty well.  I still wake up one or two times a night but if my thoughts start to whirl, I pack them in the cars and vans, send them out on the mental highway and vow to deal with those thoughts in the daylight.  Seems to work and since my brain isn't recovering from a binge, I go back to sleep just fine.

This realization about shame stored deep inside me has hit me like a ton of bricks.  I'm trying to figure out how best to deal with it.  Do I want to blog it here and process it out in writing?  Or is it too personal and just too risky to share?  I might read up on Brene Brown's shame works.  She says it is the intensely painful feeling that we unworthy of love and belonging.  Because I've never felt unworthy of love, I never thought this applied to me.  Unworthy of belonging though....hmmm...yes, I think I do feel that way in some areas.

I can also double back to my therapist and spend some time on these areas.  That's so expensive, though, and this is free! Lol.  We'll see.  But I do need to deal with these feelings welling up inside of me.

On a positive note, because I'm so focused on what's happening in my head in this regard, I'm spending more time obsessing about these thoughts and how I need to deal with them, than I am thinking about drinking.  Drinking would quiet those thoughts but I don't want to do that anymore.

This is definitely a different rodeo.....