Starting to have feelings is an important part of recovery.  This is proof that you are starting to recover, your brain is starting to heal,  the receptors are starting to connect and fire.

We have spent a long time training ourselfs on how to change our feelings - by pouring alcohol over them. Our feelings are reduced, or maybe eliminated.  We have rewired our brain to jump the pleasure and feelings circuit with alcohol and drugs. That is why we do things when under the influence that would be unimaginable while sober.

Recognizing our part, how to accept, and how it makes us feel now, is part of the healing process.  Having a record of my feelings helps me chart progress.

Below are several helpful tools to understand my feelings and how to chart them. 

All items below can be printed for you to use and review later.  

Many people have suffered from depression, fear, dissapointment. Add Alcohol to the recipe, and it can have life ending consequences. identifying  your feelings is one of the many steps to recovery.  

Excerpt from the Promises:   Our feelings of uselessness  and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away; our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. 

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Use the tools above to measure your progress.

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Excerpt from Spiritual Experience  Page 568 

Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline. With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it “God-consciousness.” 

Most emphatically we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts. He can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial. We find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality of the program. Willingness, honesty and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable.