Exactly the Right Amount of Pain

Can we achieve it by giving up our morning cold brew?

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Hello friends — filling in for A.J. this Sunday. If you want more of this thing I do, my newsletter’s here. A.J. will be back soon. —Ben Gaffaney

I’ve recently taken on a sponsee at AA, prompting me to revisit journals from early in my sobriety. Early on I struggled mightily with how to conceive of and accept a “Higher Power,” an entity greater than myself that could shoulder my troubles long enough for me to get my act together and learn how to heal. I’ve oscillated between atheist and agnostic my entire life, but I wanted to purse my “HP” honestly to frame AA Steps 1-3, not just shrug and move along to the more work-focused part of the program, when you list all your resentments and address your role in each.

After six years sober, I don’t long for alcohol, but I do miss the ability to shift my mood on command. This has put me into a similar place today, where I want a clear delineation between (obsessive, damaging) self-soothing and (healthy, with effective boundaries) self-care, when one doesn’t really exist. I have plenty of the underlying trappings of obsessive behavior, like relying on outside affirmation to maintain my self-esteem, which helped me play a leading role in some pretty codependent relationships, and I pay close attention to those behaviors. If I short-circuit, say, calculating the ratio of how often I reach out to someone compared to how often they reach out to me, I can pay attention to how that friendship makes me feel, rather than starting with resentment.

Of late I’ve been weeding out my life, figuring out what to keep and what to let go of. Nobody’s actively hurt me, it’s more like: What relationships don’t suit me anymore? Historically, I’ve been terrified of quiet-quitting any friendship because what if I’m right? What if they don’t even notice? I’ve heard A.J. call it “little boy shit” on his podcast and it’s absolutely pouty and sad, left over from whatever attention I didn’t receive as a middle child or high-achieving student who never had to seek out praise in grammar school. So letting go means looking inward: Does my time with person X prompt me to feel bad about myself? It’s like an advanced version of “If you can’t accept no for an answer, you shouldn’t ask the question.”