Why Balance is Critically Important in Life and Addiction Recovery

I keep thinking about balance and how important that is as an over-arching sort of principle. So what does that mean? I think of yin and yang, and I think of seasonal cycles, and I think of our emotions and our activities, and I feel like that balance is a fundamental force in our lives, not achieving the balance, so much, as the act of balancing. There are outside forces, and it’s up to us to adjust for overall balance. 

Yin and yang, Pixabay.

When I think of balance, I immediately picture the symbol for yin and yang. I’m not qualified to speak from either a religious or a philosophical view, but in the most simplistic terms, it is the idea that everything is encapsulated in shifting dualities that are not in competition, but complementary. 

There is the idea that light can’t exist without the contrast of darkness, that the forces of the world act as they act and that there is a pull of those seeming opposing forces to find balance with each other.  And this idea can be extended internally or expanded to society, to nature, to our relationship with the universe.

Visually, I picture the old hippy lava lamps, where one blob changes and elongates and the rest shifts to accommodate, and new forms are created, all contained and constrained by their sphere or container.

Lava lamp, Martin Lostak

The seasons, pushing, adjusting, one giving way to the next, veer from one extreme to the other, where a brutal winter suddenly shifts, sometimes for a day, but inevitably on towards spring and summer. The skies clear, and the winds sweep in warmer air, and the oceans rise and fall, and the atmosphere warms on one side of the world, and cools on the other, and not in the moment of the extremes, or even in one location, but in the end, from a long view, there’s a balance. 

Balance as individuals, in our daily lives

Individually, we have lots of areas of ourselves and our lives to attend to that compete. There are only 24 hours in the day, and we are only one person. We have family and work and personal care and recreation, learning, social, health and perhaps a spiritual side ... 

Sometimes one of these will demand much of our time (we’re in school, or we have a new baby, or a new job), but usually, the balance rights itself, or a new balance is formed. Generally, we accommodate more than we realized we were capable of. 

Sometimes a change in landscape just makes it easier to form a different balance with work, home, health, etc. Sometimes this happens whether we engage with the effects of these changes or not. And sometimes we ignore things. That often forces a crisis at some point, but then we worry about an awful lot of things we could really safely ignore, too. And there’s a driving desire to escape with drugs or alcohol, or entertainment, or by socializing, or working, or shopping or gambling, etc., and that can escalate to a tipping point as well. 

Balance in our Emotional Landscape

And then we have our internal landscape, our emotions, our actions and reactions. Sometimes we’re more up or more down, and those can vary to a fairly wide degree from day to day, season to season, decade to decade, even. 

And there’s a balance within each of those areas, as well. Sometimes we sacrifice along the edges, or for a while, and then we come back to center again. Or I think that’s what we’re looking to do, and to make that sense of balance longer and stronger, while becoming more adept at not letting the demands we place on ourselves and whatever comes up in the world to knock us off that high wire.

Now, some of us have more of a tolerance for things like risk (or a disregard for it), and they sway mightily on that wire. But they’re like those performers at the circus who act like they are going to fall, but really are fine. It’s all high drama. Until they’re not fine. And trained performers have a much better sense of what they’re engaging in than we do as we fling ourselves around in life or, conversely, try to curl up tight to withstand it.

How to Find Your Own Balance

So how do we find our own balance? I think it lies in objective assessment, looking ahead for obstacles that might trip us up (NOT catastrophizing, just awareness and readiness), and reminding ourselves of what a good balance looks like for us -- so that we feel pleased and peaceful with the way we’re allocating our time and attention.

We can work on how we are going to respond to things AND on how we can reduce some of our stresses -- in big or little ways. Would it be good to give up a volunteer commitment or a book club? Or get some more help around the house. Or do we need to be extra careful around certain events -- holidays, summertime, vacations, family. We can operate with a loose plan so we know what we’re doing if we’re taken by surprise. And we can watch some of the fundamentals, like sleep, eating well, a few healthy routines, taking little breaks to clear our minds, connecting with nature when possible, checking our moods and trying to lean into gratitude. 

Moderation in all Things?

Now, if balance and moderation in all things is a goal, where does alcohol or other drug use fit in? I tend to separate my addictive tendencies into separate categories, I had my drugs of choice (alcohol, cigarettes, and a few others), and then I have my more manageable potentially addictive issues. What about destructive behavior, like gambling or binge-eating, particularly if you’ve stopped drinking, say?

Eating, as an Example

Well, as people often point out, we can’t stop eating. No. But we can stop eating poorly, whatever that looks like. I don’t think it needs to follow an abstinence model (unless you’re avoiding a particular ingredient or pattern of behavior), but I don’t think we should constantly tempt ourselves either. 

If you know your poison is sugar, for instance, well, you can try to be a purist which is very hard and overwhelming. Or you can watch for added sugar in foods overall and get rid of desserts. Or you can train yourself to have one small treat once a week or so. What will work best for you with the least risk and least effort for that piece of it?

Can you ever have desserts? Maybe. Possibly. It depends. It depends on whether or not you can enjoy a bite or a portion of a dessert or whether you are craving some feeling of bliss, that explosion of flavor, energy, comfort, indulgence, control, whatever it is that makes you not want to stop and that will set off a longing into the next many days. 

We each have our own tolerances for this kind of thing. I’m decent with my desserts, for instance, but I need to pay loose attention. I can easily go from an occasional sweet to something closer to every day, but I can usually reduce that, and I don’t focus in on it in quite the same way I do with alcohol. It’s more easily interruptible. Same with coffee, for me.

I never got to a place where I could enjoy alcohol in that way -- a moderate, sustainable, occasional kind of way. Now, is it a fact that I COULDN’T do it? No, not really. I think we can do anything that we set our minds to. But alcohol, for one, was too alluring for me to want to work that hard at for something that was going to be basically unsatisfying. The idea of drinking a single glass of champagne was not appealing to me. It was the excess, the getting drunk, the bingeing. I just wanted to party with abandon in a bubble where nothing bad would happen. And that turned out to be impossible. I couldn’t act completely irresponsible with alcohol and not have that impinge on life. Escaping life hurts everything around me that I touch, I found. How hard did I want to work at keeping it in my life with that as a constant danger?

Solving Underlying Issues Should Solve All Addictive Issues

Now, shouldn’t it be true that once you find some inner peace that you won’t need these crutches in the same way anymore and you’ll come to a place where you can take them or leave them? Yes, hopefully. 

But let me just ask, why the importance of including something that has such potential (and such history) in hurting us? Do we want to give “drinking,” or something else that much importance in our lives that we’re willing to carve it out its own space, right there next to family and work, especially if it constricts everything else? Is there a way to keep everything else intact and not have that happen? I don’t know. What do you think, for you, at this point in time? 

Walking a tightrope, Unsplash, Sean Benesh.

Honest Self-Assessment is the Foundation for a Balanced Life

Some people have just fallen into bad habits, and with some awareness and a little bit of effort, they will move into new, healthier phases in their lives that may or may not include alcohol. Some of us have formed deep emotional attachments to our object(s) of addiction. That can be harder to break by just reducing, and many people switch around, as well. For some it’s a matter of life and death but they can’t envision life without it. It may be all they have left.

I want to emphasize here that no matter where you are in your life journey and no matter what part addictive activity has played over how many years, you can create a life that’s good for you and that feels better than it does right now. 

So where you are is your business, and whether or not you want to quit altogether or you just want to take a small break and experiment, I’d love to talk to you and provide some help!