Healing has its own losses

This weekly column seeks to help educate our community about emotional healing through grief. People may write questions to Golden Willow Retreat and they will be answered privately to you and possibly as a future article for others. List a first name that grants permission for printing.

Dear Dr. Ted:

I am in recovery and have been working hard to improve personal health mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Even though I have now been sober for six months, I am finding it difficult to navigate many losses that I had no idea would be involved with healing and improving my quality of life. I thought I could quit drinking and have things just magically get better. I am grateful for my sobriety, and am noticing some happy changes in my life, but I am also aware that healing has a lot of losses in the process.

Thanks, Bill Dear Bill:

First of all, I commend you on choosing to improve your quality of life and for seeing that possibly one of the barriers for health was the lack of sobriety.

It takes great bravery and strength to step out of behaviors that do not serve you due to the fact that they have been habitualized (or medically become a true disease) and transitioning from one status quo to the unknown of another leads to high levels of fear within your conscious and unconscious psyche.

When you transition from one state of being to another, there is loss, even if those transitions serve you for a higher quality of life. I don’t believe that secondary losses are discussed enough publicly, and this is a great time to help others by sharing more information.

Secondary losses are the losses that occur after you have experienced a loss, with the primary loss being the focal point. For example, from your sharing, there were many losses you did not expect in choosing to be sober. Some of the losses may include changing daily activities, having to change friends, reestablishing a new community, feeling yours and other people’s emotions soberly, and other aspects of your life that no longer serve you in your drive for sobriety and a higher quality of life.

These secondary losses can be profound, and if disenfranchised due to not recognizing them or due to not feeling they are important, they can wreak havoc on your life and decrease emotional sobriety as well as be catalyst of relapse. Change and secondary losses do not only include people within the recovery from addiction community, but also it includes anybody who is trying to make changes in their life or where events have changed their life even if not by choice.

Death, divorce, graduation, retirement, moving, birth, marriage and many other changes in life have a grief process, and can have many underlying losses involved with the primary losses. Loss of family and community is an enormous secondary loss that happens quite often and is rarely acknowledged.

I see this in the recovery world, after a death or divorce, or moving to a new area. The loss of healthy and unhealthy supports are both losses as new norms and behaviors need to be established, leaving you in a place of having to redefine the support system around you.

Acknowledging there are many losses in the midst of change is the first step – and then consciously building healthy supports to walk with you as you move through the barriers of healing is the key. A good thing to remember is that many secondary losses are probably there for those who choose to not heal as well and there are probably more being established.

Choosing to do the work will decrease the chaos and build trust within yourself that you can consciously grow and heal leading to less chaos, better support and a higher quality of life.

Thank you for the question. I wish you well. Until next week, take care.