An AA suggests that stress reminds us to plunge deeper into the program
NO, SERENITY doesn’t mean a lack of any stress or tension. It means, instead, the inner security that enables us to bear these stresses and to use them as occasions for growth. I need not fear or shun anxiety, because there is a certainty at the very core of my being, a certainty that remains unshaken by passing disturbances, If I genuinely turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand Him, I need have no fear of the tensions that are essential to my growth. I can meet anxiety with peace as long as there is a quiet place in my soul where I know that I am a child of God and a worthwhile human being.
When I first came into AA, I was thrilled by the concept of serenity. My life had been so filled with anxiety, often bordering on sheer panic, that it was exciting just to know that things didn’t have to be that way, that my life could be peaceful. And, for a while, I was amazed at how much serenity seemed to be coming my way. A sober life had many fewer fear-provoking aspects than a drunk one! But as time went on, I began to wonder about my peace and serenity. Sometimes I reacted to things with anger, or occasions arose that caused me to experience a great deal of tension. At these times, I was distressed by a fear of losing my newfound serenity. I was constantly taking my emotional temperature, and when I found that I was tense or anxious, I became afraid that I was about to lose all the happiness I had found in AA.
The problem, I think, lay in my understanding of serenity. I thought of it as the condition of a cow, contentedly chewing her cud in a lush pasture; or I thought of it as a perfectly calm, unruffled pond. But I’m not a cow, and I’m not a pond. I am a human being, and difficult situations are a part of human life. A certain amount of tension and anxiety is part of the human condition; why should I have hoped to be exempt? And why should this universal human condition have worried me so much?
I was thinking in a dangerous circle: I was afraid of being afraid! I was creating anxiety by constantly checking my feelings to see whether I was feeling anxious. If I did feel anxious, I began trying to back out of a situation, or I worried that I had somehow missed something in the AA program. If you’re really on the program, I thought, you shouldn’t feel anxiety. But finally I realized that my fear of anxiety was a major part of the difficulty. It was like being unable to sleep because of fear of insomnia. I found that I was anxious about being anxious, tense about being tense, afraid of being afraid.
Alcoholics have good reason to fear excessive stress, especially in the early days of sobriety, because it has been widely observed that we have a low level of stress-tolerance. We have learned a method of escape: All too often, rather than endure anxiety, we avoid it by drinking. Because we are aware of this tendency in ourselves, we are likely to protect ourselves carefully in our early sobriety, and shun any situation that might lead to tension or uneasiness. As we grow up in our sobriety, however, we find it impossible to avoid all unpleasantness. The person who is always comfortable, who never bothered by anything, probably is not growing. Growth, involving change, is painful. Or, perhaps, the completely comfortable fellow is simply refusing to recognize his discomfort, and is pushing his feelings out of his awareness. But denying uneasiness or avoiding it by stagnation are both highly unsatisfactory answers.
As our length of sobriety increases, so does our ability to endure stress. We find that we can live with anxiety, and can use it. Our tension and our discomfort can spur us on to building something better in our lives. Feeling a certain amount of uneasiness in one’s situation is essential to improving that situation; after all, the contented cow has no incentive to change or improve! But human beings have a built-in dissatisfaction. We want to be more than we are.
Basically, there are two ways of dealing with anxiety: We can avoid situations that cause us stress–or we can increase our tolerance, our ability to withstand stress. In our early days in AA, most of us find that we are avoiding much of the stress of our earlier lives. We find that a sober life simply brings fewer panic-producing situations. Our relief from the anxieties of our drinking days sometimes brings that glorious pink-cloud period. But the time arrives when we come down from the pink cloud and face the trials and cares of the world, and then we often feel anxious. When we get a little upset or nervous, sometimes we panic, wondering: Is this a return to the old vicious cycle? Are we about to get drunk again?
If we fear or deny this dissatisfaction, rather than building on it, we are being less than a fully realized person. The real satisfactions in life come from overcoming obstacles, not avoiding them. Watch a child learning a new skill. As he tries something that is new to him, he will, at first, fail. You will see him feeling frustrated and reacting with anger and anxiety–the same feelings alcoholics dread so! But watch the sheer delight that comes into the child’s face as he masters the new skill. Isn’t the joy of achievement worth the moments of frustration?