Hi Kristyd,

Wow your journey is just incredible! You’ve overcome so much already! It seems like you really opened up and got yourself on the Path, but what people rarely tell you about the Path is that once you’re on it, the growth never stops and growth is painful. It often times seems like you are going in reverse, all these hard things seem to happen at once. But it’s like that old cliche goes: life only hands you the things it knows you can handle.

So these things are opportunities for growth, which you know because you’ve embraced it and you are pro-actively working towards getting stronger. Congratulations on quitting drinking as well as stepping out there to take your mindfulness course, those are huge steps! Now as you move forward, you have to intensively question why you felt the need to binge drink as a result of peer pressure. Did you feel like you would miss out or that your friends wouldn’t like you anymore? Is there some underlying message you tell yourself as in “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t deserve to have healthy boundaries with my body”?

Best advice I got when I was going through this kind of stuff was to journal and exercise. I quit smoking after quite some time and exercise, mostly running, helped a ton. It also helps mediate anxiety. Researching and cooking new foods helped, I actually made my own cookbook at the request of my very first therapist and boy did that focus my energy! Find things that bring you joy and start focusing on them. Get a good routine going, that always helps too!

And keep posting here!

Cheers and good luck,

M