I found in my mid-range recovery that sometimes I would come across a thought or an image that may cause a brief inflated emotion, but that I could say a quick prayer or otherwise wave it off and move on. However, sometimes the thought or image moved quickly from head to heart and seemed to kind of linger in my chemistry even after I had physically moved on. I would always surrender openly with another person these types of events and their after-effects. That way they never had a chance to build up. At one point I started surrendering even the inflated emotions…I would do it by simply typing “i.e.” to a recovery friend. Soon I found it would rather just avoid looking in the first place where possible than have to surrender the i.e. …I also found that this small temporary denial caused my emotions to become a lot less inflated and my need to look a lot less compelling.
