The second meeting

I went to the second appointment on Friday morning. It was another chance to talk about how I'd got on that week, which is something I look forward to now. It helps having something to aim for at the end of the week, knowing I have a release for whatever happens. My current thinking on independence is that people should still rely on themselves first and foremost, but I now see the value of having the occasional vent to get a new perspective on your thoughts.

We did a kind of "goals" chart to get down on paper what I'm actually trying to do. The ultimate goal is for me to learn the control around drinking that I've never really bothered with before, to kill the urge I normally feel to just keep going and not worry about tomorrow. For support in this I have family, friends, the weekly visits and in the next few weeks I'll be going to see a counsellor too. What am I doing to achieve it? - mainly making sure I have a plan in place whenever drinking might be on the horizon, simple things like thinking about what to drink and what sort of time would be good to go, and keeping an eye out for risk influences. Why am I doing it? - after I'd rambled for a while, it seemed to her that my main motivation was to be seen as a better person than I'd been presenting myself as due to drink. I don't know if that's noble or misguided or what, but I guess it's basically why I'm doing it - I've become tired of being a person like that, being seen as a person like that, having to apologise for things "another person" had done.

She said I'd done very well on Wednesday when I was at a funeral wake all day and managed to stay sober throughout. I alternated between ~3.4% mixed and ~1.7% shandy, with the net effect that I was never close to crossing any sort of line. It felt very hard at first, almost unnatural, but I got into the swing of it later on. She said that me choosing to do things like this so quickly, and managing to stick to it, was a massive thing. I guess I spend so much time at the moment just planning my days and actually going through the ups and downs that all this involves that I hadn't thought that much of it, but now I do feel quite proud I managed it okay.

Recently I've made some steps forward by stopping caring what people think about my problems. Whenever I've told people or written things on here, I've instantly felt a sense of shame and stupidity for having to go through all of this to solve what isn't even a problem to most other people. But recently I've realised that what other people think of my problems doesn't make any difference. If they understand where I'm coming from, all the better and I appreciate their compassion. If they don't, well, so what? I go a long way on here and with people to explain why I find this difficult, far more verbosely and eloquently than the vast majority of other people could ever manage, and if that isn't enough then I don't see any value to me in keeping on trying and feeling bad for having a problem. I was probably trying to fix perception rather than reality - not so much worrying about how to actually solve the things I have trouble with, but more trying to change people's views of me. That's wrong. Everyone has problems of their own - I'm very capable at things other people are hopeless at and fret about every day, so what use could they have comparing themselves to me? They'd be better off just trying to do something about the things they're crap at, which is what I've been doing for the past month. Someone close to me told me a few weeks ago that my problem is that I don't value myself highly enough and see all the things people love me for, and I remembered that I do by nature concentrate on problems, my own and other people's, and sometimes forget about the good things. So, at the moment, I feel good about what I've managed and want to remember this is just one part of me and I'm trying fucking hard to do something about it, a step that most people will never take with their own problems.