In the world of the Twelve Steps, there are two things that are very common—and on which I often base my own recovery—and those are slogans and acronyms. The best-known slogans are perhaps “Live and let live,” “One Day at a Time” and “Let go and let God.” My own favorite is: “When in doubt, do without.” Every time I hear a slogan, there’s some situation I can apply it to, allowing me to grow spiritually and emotionally.
We hear acronyms a little less often than slogans, but there still are dozens of them. It would, of course, be incredibly interesting to discuss them all here, but unfortunately, that will have to wait for another time...
(Although… I heard a really great one last week, and I just can’t resist sharing it here! DENIAL: Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying. Powerful, isn’t it?!)
Anyway, I think the absolute king of twelve-step acronyms is HALT:
Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired
When we notice throughout our day that we’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, that’s our inner self crying out for us to literally “halt”. To stop what we’re doing and reconnect with ourselves for a moment. No matter how busy or “important” the world may be, a body or soul crying out for attention is ultimately much more important. It’s an invitation to pause for a moment and take care of ourselves.
I can totally relate to this acronym and use it as well. Still, over the years, I’ve added a few more words to the “H” myself. These are: Headache, Hormones, and Heat.
Headache
In the distant, distant past, I used to believe that physical symptoms stood on their own. That muscle pain had a purely physical, medical cause, that digestive problems were solely due to the intestines, or that a headache was a neurological issue. The fact that the medical world has always approached things this way—and that hospitals are still organized as such (and many doctors don’t look beyond the physical body itself, separate from our inner lives)—is undoubtedly the reason for this old way of thinking. It took me many years of doctor’s visits to finally come to the conclusion that all my physical symptoms (maybe not yours, but definitely mine) are connected to my emotional well-being. Headaches, too, can be directly linked to how I’m feeling emotionally. Am I busy, busy, busy and setting my priorities wrong? Headache. Am I talking way too much without giving the other person a chance to speak? Headache. Am I constantly absorbing stimuli in the form of text messages, YouTube videos, or Pinterest? Headache.
I used to solve that very simply, without giving it too much thought: pop a painkiller and that’s that! Today I don’t do that anymore, and I see a headache first and foremost as an invitation to HALT. My body (in this case, my head) is literally begging me to slow down, to take it easier. Only when I realize how and when I’ve pushed myself too far do I take a painkiller. For me, that’s already a huge step forward compared to two years ago. Back then, I felt that 'you've made your bed, now you must lie in it,' and I would go through those intense headaches for hours as a kind of self-chastisement. Today, thankfully, I’m a bit more tolerant of myself and realize that it’s about “progress, not perfection.” After all, I’m still human.
Still, I did discover an interesting approach to headaches back then, which I don’t want to fail to share.
You’d never believe it works, but it really does. It takes a little more energy and effort than a painkiller, but then you also have fewer chemicals in your body, of course. I still think it’s really cool that this approach works!
Hormones
God made us all wonderfully beautiful and ingenious. I’m truly convinced of that. Still, there are about seven days a month when I’m a whole lot less sure of that, and that’s during my PMS and period. Oh, man! During my PMS, every single month, I could literally kill someone out of sheer grumpiness. Not really, of course. Although… So many hormones racing through my body, and they’re all screaming at the top of their lungs that they’re telling the truth. “Yes, Nathalie, the whole world is against you. Everyone thinks you’re a pain in the neck,’ ‘You’re so lonely, nobody really loves you, and what a pathetic life you have,’ and ‘You’re so sad, and that’s how you are every day. Your life is truly worthless,’ are just a few examples. Every tiny emotion gets blown out of proportion during my PMS, and it actually took me quite a while to realize that they were lies, that none of it is true, and that my thoughts would return to normal proportions three days later. On days like that, I really have to rein myself and my thoughts in and say, “Halt! Cut it out, now!” Then it’s just a matter of “putting them all in the freezer” for a bit and taking them out again a few days later to look at them calmly. And then it turns out that most of it just isn’t worth the attention.
During my period itself, I’m simply exhausted and all I want to do is lie on the couch with a hot water bottle on my belly. Someone once told me that during our period, we should do only three things: pray, eat, and sleep. Every month I repeat that to myself: I don’t have to do anything but pray, eat, and sleep. Cleaning, going to the store, or ironing can all wait a few more days. Today it’s just praying, eating, and sleeping. Halt, in other words.
Heat
A year ago, I would never have thought to add “heat” to my HALT acronym, but things are different now. In October, I urgently moved into an apartment with many large windows in the living room, where the (blazing summer) sun beats down from early morning until around 3 p.m. This has already led to hot, sweltering conditions here, especially during the extreme heat wave of the past two weeks. In my living room, the temperature averaged 33°C (91°F) for nearly a week (peaking at 34.5°C (94°F) on the hottest day), and in my bedroom, the average was around 30°C (86°F). Yeah, well, at that point I just can’t function anymore. I really noticed that my whole body was slowing down: my brain couldn’t make connections as quickly anymore, which meant I often got things wrong; I barely felt hungry; I was sweating buckets despite taking four cold showers a day and having the fan running constantly next to me; and I felt like I was just barely surviving. I did try to escape the heat, but having to do that day after day left me completely exhausted after a few days. Yesterday, it wasn’t just about “taking it easier” and putting off non-essential tasks—it was really “I’m about to drop dead and all I can do is sleep, sleep, sleep.” So, I had to stop. It just wasn’t optional anymore: coming to a standstill was necessary. That also meant spending a whole day with my cell phone turned off and not checking any messages. No communication with the outside world, only with God. Someone once called it “turtling.” Just like a turtle does: pulling your head in and crawling safely into your shell for a while. And when the time is right again, coming back out.
For me, HALT is a useful and essential tool for putting self-care first. What are my body and soul crying out for? And am I willing to listen to them so that I can reconnect with myself—and ultimately with others as well? Or would I rather keep pushing through, thinking I’m stronger than my body?
To wrap things up, here’s a little image I came across this week, which I’ve had as my phone’s screensaver for the past few days. I found it wonderfully comforting.
