Acting As If

 

The behavior we call “acting as if” can be a powerful recovery tool. Acting as if is a way to practice the positive. It’s a positive form of pretending. It’s a tool we use to get ourselves unstuck. It’s a tool we make a conscious decision to use. Acting as if can be helpful when a feeling begins to control us. We make a conscious decision to act as if we feel fine and are going to be fine. ~ Beattie, Melody. The Language of Letting Go: Hazelden Meditation Series (pp. 16-17). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Did you play dolls as a child?
I played with but I tended to make clothes.
While my sister and the girl next door
mothered their babies, I was the hunter/gatherer.
I created a world “made” of turtle shells.
huge ones for a shelter, small ones as dishes,
and containers, the effect dramatized
by aiming the evaporative air cooler
on our under-the-table location.
This, though, is not the Act-As-If of Recovery,
though they’re related.
Recovery Acting-As-If is a form of pretending
in the same way, of acting out,
of role-playing as a way to figure out
who we wish to become.
And many of us have found a comfort level
we could not have imagined
had we tried to play grown-ups as we explored.