Reddit Reddit reviews Animals as Guides for the Soul: Stories of Life-Changing Encounters

We found 1 Reddit comments about Animals as Guides for the Soul: Stories of Life-Changing Encounters. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Books
Death & Grief
Self-Help
Pet Loss Grief
Animals as Guides for the Soul: Stories of Life-Changing Encounters
Collection of storiesShort stories of animals
Check price on Amazon

1 Reddit comment about Animals as Guides for the Soul: Stories of Life-Changing Encounters:

u/thisyoungthang ยท 4 pointsr/leaves

Hello! Thank you so much for sharing your story. It sounds a lot like mine. I love this community, and I have faith that I will be able to use these connections to help motivate me. I hope I can be a force for motivation as well!

I'm currently on Day 3 of being sober for the first time in at least 3 years. Discovering /leaves definitely helped me to get on the right track. It made me decide to quit, a step I think you are on right now. I can't believe how good I feel right now. It's like every moment feels like an epiphany if I choose to think about how far I've come.

I told myself "Tomorrow I will quit" a few times before it "stuck." The first day, I lasted til 5PM... a huge accomplishment for a regular wake-n-baker... The second day I made it til 11PM and then got overwhelmed by the feeling that I couldn't sleep.

The first day, I got through it by allowing myself to be incredibly honest about my feelings, and giving myself something productive to think about. I would recommend any book that has to do with improving our lives through understanding psychology. The point of quitting for me was to be able to be honest with myself and my feelings. That's paramount, because if I don't have that, I don't have self-esteem; and without self-esteem I can't have good relationships with other people. It's important for me to feel like I'm not avoiding my thoughts or damning my aggressive impulses. Using was a way of not acknowledging feelings of irritation, sadness, frustration, anger, etc. - all things that are legitimate to feel because they help motivate us to do good things. Depression/Anxiety/Frustration is a feeling of not doing anything beneficial with one's life.

It is a fact that we feel better when we help others.

It is a fact that we need to learn to love ourselves before we can be of any service to others. It's vital to see, "This shadow that exists in me, also exists in you. We react to it in different ways, but these negative feelings are a natural and valuable part of being human." We need to come to terms with our own shadow so that we can be compassionate to others.

Imagine a friend told you, "I feel worthless. I can't believe how sad I feel about my dog dying. I mean, it was two months ago and I still can't get it out of my head. I feel like I can't do anything worthwhile."

Would you be like, "Hm. Yeah, you probably shouldn't feel that way. Why don't you try forgetting about it with a big bowl?" Um, NO!!!

You wouldn't tell that to a dear friend, so you shouldn't say anything like that to yourself. That advice would only side-step the problem, making it worse by making the person suffering feel incapable of confronting negative feelings in a meaningful way.

Because of all of this, I would recommend spending time with a book that encourages you to take your failings with tolerance, love, and hope. I really feel like I pulled off my first day sober because I was actively dealing with problems I had always avoided. I read [this book] (http://www.amazon.com/Animals-Guides-Soul-Life-Changing-Encounters/dp/0345424042) nearly from cover to cover that first day. It helps to feel like your anxious or depressed feelings are legitimate, no matter how you approach that task. It was late in the day - getting to the point of incredibly hard to resist toking - when I got to the chapter on pet death. It felt so cathartic to cry about some pets I've had to put down in the last few years - things I never dealt with while sober because I haven't been remotely close to sober for a long time. The point of the chapter was to show how universal feelings of loss are. It was great to read all kinds of people's stories about how they coped or were still processing grief. I feel like potheads have a lot of unprocessed emotions that are perpetually covered up by the habit. It felt great to feel like there was a reason for me to feel sad and anxious - and that I'm not alone in those feelings.

Honestly, I would recommend going to a local used book store. Give a look around the Self Help/Psychology/New Age sections and see if anything appeals to you. The goal is getting in touch with our inner selves - trusting our feelings, accepting their value, and feeling responsible enough to act on insight gained. Even for "happy" people, or sober people, working to recognize the value of one's inner self is daily work. The only difference is that people who use a lot of drugs have given up on believing in themselves to be able to accomplish that work alone.

Trust me, that after daily use, you just need to get a few days under your belt. You have to keep telling yourself that you're doing the right thing, and before you know it you'll start to really feel it in your heart. After daily use, the MJ starts to control your rationality. We come up with all kinds of "reasons" why life is better high. But their just fear-reasons; evasion of reality because we don't trust ourselves to be able to handle the demands of daily living. For me, part of the struggle was letting go of things that kept dragging me into the past. I can't work on today's issues if I'm still fighting yesterday's battles. Try to give up on feelings of self-pity; take responsibility for what has happened in the past by telling yourself that once you figure out how to love yourself, it will be much easier to make the right decisions all the time. I can't go back and change the past, and there's no reason for me to wonder whether I've been doing the wrong thing all along. I think you recognize that we had some good times with MJ, but it's time to move on. In order to feel fulfilled our lives need to get fuller every day - as we learn to love new people and accept deeper facets of our own personality. Work toward acceptance. Know that you will be racked with anxiety, but it will be temporary if you can stay strong. Focus on the things that give you hope. Another big part of committing to this path was deciding on a Dream Career. Even if I don't end up in it, I made a picture in my mind of a life that would be worth being sober for. Reading that book I linked made me realize I wanted to train service/therapy animals. I know that I can't do this if I smoke daily; I would just be looking forward to the workday ending so I could blaze. I wouldn't be able to give my full attention to the nuances of others' behavior, which would mean I wouldn't be as good at communicating. Then there's the whole self-esteem issue, and how jonesin' makes one feel truly worthless in addition to mentally distracted. I just knew I couldn't shine my brightest light if I kept submerging myself in haze.

tl;dr: Read something that allows you to identify with your negative feelings and feel compassionate toward yourself. You will feel anxious anyway when you first go sober, so it's good to have something concrete to blame the anxiety on - and also feel like you're making progress in that recognition. Make an image in your head of the best-case scenario for your life, and then believe that you have the strength and time to achieve it. Also - allow yourself the right to rest and work in equal proportions.

Good luck!!! Keep us updated! We're here for you! It fucking sucks for a little bit, but it's totally doable and feels great. You can do it!!