What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

Well, my addictive personality wants to chime in here and say that I’ve historically used substances to escape the reality of being an actual human with emotions.

I preferred dumping metaphorical garbage all over my life. It made me feel better about the chaos when I would, inevitably, eventually sober up and feel things again.

Something I could point to and say, “see? Everything sucks and it hurts all the time,” as an explanation for why my life looked the way it did.

Kinda cliche, huh?

I’d love to pretend like I’ve completely evolved as a person since getting sober for good, but I am who I am and I’ve had time to accept that.

I still have poor coping mechanisms, but these days I try to stop for a millisecond here and there and feel my feelings.