Early recovery needs to be a simple time of self-care, not optimizing the rest of one's life.

Goal-setting is good, but turning recovery into a wellness plan can derail early sobriety.

Sobriety is not about size; it's about life.

I love a good list. I have lists of house projects and plans. (Most of them will never come to fruition, but it's good to have HGTV dreams, I guess.) I have lists of article ideas, vacation spots, and books I want to read. I collect these tabulations in a notebook, and, yes, I have a list of my lists on the first page. It's good to have a plan. It's good to work towards a goal.

When I first got sober, I so wanted to make a list out of it. I wanted to write down all my goals, affirmations, and plans for my newly sober self. Early sobriety showed me windows of empowerment paired with flashes of joy. My synapses were firing up in a way that they hadn't been allowed to do so in years. True, a lot of these feelings were also paired with searing bouts of pain (all the emotions) and weariness (all the healing). I am sure I wanted to make lists about those things, too. It would've been titled: "How to Heal From Pouring Wine Over Your Feelings for More Than 20 Years, in 6 Easy Steps."

Or something like that.

But I didn't make any lists in early sobriety. I didn't think about goals or plans or anything further than the next 30 minutes. As much as I was gifted momentary glimpses of a fully-realized, sober life, I was also experiencing mind fog, a whole lot of feelings (oh, so many feelings!), and what I like to refer to as "bitchy alcoholic lizard brain" that just wanted to pour wine all over everything.

Before recovery, any sort of confusion or dismay in my life meant tackling it at all costs. I had to make some sort of plan. But in my early recovery, I simply could not strategize my sobriety. In all honesty, I was breathing and not drinking. That's it. I was a newly sober lump, going from a counselor's couch to a recovery meeting and back home, where I would sleep and possibly heat up a frozen pizza for the kids for dinner. It was a simple time. There were no lists.

Sugar, noise, and the lizard brain

I ate all the sugar. I ate cake and cookies and developed a lust for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups* that was hard to fight. I didn't make plans. I had no regimen. My recovery was not a "goal" with a list of steps and to-do items. It was just a "Be." It was just my life. I couldn't break it down into steps if I tried.

But every once in a while, when I would gather my orange candy wrappers and dump them in the trash, a little worried voice would whisper, way in the back of my tired, baby-sober brain: "You're going to get really fat if you keep eating like this. You should cut back. You should make a plan for healthy eating. You should write a grocery list."

I didn't. Somehow, I knew that if I tried to make this about a whole *waves arms around my body* wellness thing, I would lose my way. My brain could barely keep up with what was happening as it was. Its reward center had been completely hijacked, and if I tried to add a daily exercise regimen and some kale to it, I would be doomed.

Sobriety comes before anything else

As my years in recovery added up, there were times for a good list. There was even time for kale (but does anyone really ever have time for kale?) and all the healthy mindsets and lists galore that I so love to make. But my recovery would always say, at the end of the day, as I lay down in my bed with a sweet treat and a good book, "This is the most important thing. This is all that really matters. You are sober. And you plan to stay sober tomorrow."

For me, early sobriety was not a weight loss plan. It was never about my size. It was just about my life. Now, as a fifty-ish woman with a medium build and a knack for goofiness, I am still not about my size. I am about my sobriety.

*They have changed their formula, and I am no longer a zealous fan. I have moved on to the more sophisticated Dove chocolates because they give you a sweet message on the wrapper, which you can read while you scarf them down. What's not to love about that?

© Psychology Today