Shut Up, Addict

That title sounds horrible, but it's not me saying it!  Let me explain.  It's a little mantra that my husband has now.  It came up when we were talking about counseling (he's at an intake counseling session with LifeStar as I type this, and will be starting group therapy next week) . . . he's 61 days 'sober' right now, and this coming week was the soonest session they had starting.  Things are going really well for him right now, so the more passive part of his personality (which is most of his personality!) was basically telling him, "You don't need this.  You're doing fine.  Why go to therapy?  That's just a waste of time, you're already going to meetings, and now you're going to add one more thing to your list.  How much will this cost?  You don't need it."  He said he had that running through his head after he'd rescheduled this intake interview (when the counselor had to move it back a week), and when he stopped and realized what he was thinking he actually said out loud, "Shut up, addict."  He smiled when he realized he had suddenly blurted out something like that to himself, but it's now become a bit of a mantra to him.  Anytime he finds himself minimizing, making excuses or trying to rationalize something, he stops and says, "Shut up, addict."  It comes up in our conversations, and what I love about it is that when he tells me something he was thinking and every single part of me is just itching to chime in with all the reasons his logic/approach/perspective/whatever is 'flawed' (like I'm oh-so-knowledgeable!), I have found that I can just keep my mouth shut and he gets there on his own, and chuckles and says, "Shut up, addict."  He's honing in on that part of him that's telling the lies, that's perpetuating the problem and actually, verbally, telling it to knock it off.

I love the idea of just shutting down negative self-talk though.  To actually acknowledge (not just repress it) and tell it to stop.  That I'm not listening anymore, that I heard what it had to say and I'm not buying what it's selling. I tried it today.  I was up to the mirror, getting ready this morning, when I had some random 'you're so stupid that you just let this go on for so long' type of thoughts.  I was feeling them, getting a little uncomfortable, just starting to approach feeling bad for myself, when I looked boldly into the mirror and said, "Enough."  I mentally reminded myself of all the reasons I'm pretty darn amazing, and how my husband's choices to exclude me from this part of his life weren't about me being stupid, worthless or even unloved, they were just bad decisions on his part and don't reflect on me.  I was able to finish getting ready for the day and not look back since.  I plan on using 'Enough' more often . . .





(Again, I know the whole phrase sounds kinda harsh or negative or whatever -- but it's actually just a bit of self-deprecating humor for him and he's finding it very useful to point out what the addiction is telling him -- it's more about him talking to the 'addiction' than himself as the 'addict', if that makes sense!)