Holiday Monsters

Warning... "here there be monsters", a quote from Captain Barbosa himself. So, enter at your own risk. As much as I wanted to blog about the OG holiday monster himself, Krampus... I'm going with something that's a close number two on the list of things that cause Mitchell the most stress during the holidays:

FAMILY

Any of my family members reading this may want to turn back now...I love you guys, but this is going to be brutally honest.

•

Just about everyone I know can identify with holiday stress, and just about all those people can identify that our families don't typically make that any easier, and a percentage of these people have actual trauma with the holidays, family, or both. This blog is to remind you of the people, places, and things part of recovery. Early recovery specifically. This concept is that if you hang out with the same people, do the same things, and hang out in the same places as you did when you were using... your risk of relapse is near 100%. Sometimes, family can't be avoided, but sometimes, they need to be. For our own good.

"A Christmas miracle is when your family doesn’t get into a single argument all day." —Melanie White

Personally, I had to avoid people at all costs, including family, during the holidays for the first two years of my recovery journey. My mind was so overwhelmed with depression and anxiety that I just couldn't be around that many people at the time. Then there was the factor that some of those people supported my recovery life choices, but some of them didn't, and some of those ones were living in active substance use to a level I would call abuse. I could not risk that at the time and chose instead to only interact with my recovery support system. Not all of my family agreed with that, but they weren't the ones responsible for my success in finding a life of wellness. I will never regret this decision.

•

This year, as I near my four years of sobriety mark, I decided to spend Thanksgiving with people I care about, but aren't family. This is where the monsters come in. In making this decision I had a great Thanksgiving not realizing until afterward that I had avoided the looming family holiday monsters... Which was a family argument that landed someone in jail, my dad drunk dialing people in his true toxic fashion, and an incident I'll only refer to as the "Brown Friday Sale" (that one really "stinks" for everyone involved, thank the sweet Lord Baby Jesus New Daddy Jerry was there to save the day). Any of these things alone would have been enough to derail my sobriety a few short years ago. All of them together could have caused an issue even now.

So, what I'd like to get across today is that you really need self-awareness and boundaries to make decisions about your wellness for yourself. Some people are going to try and shame you for some of your boundary-protecting decisions... But ask yourself are they taking responsibility for you breaking out in handcuffs or a trip to the ER if you relapse? No, they're not. Only you are. So it's time to act and make decisions for your wellness accordingly.

I know this is a hard pill to swallow...but doing exactly what I shared in this blog saved my life. It could help you too.

Until next time.