E253: Acceptance Is Not Giving Up

What do you do when your body forces you to slow down — and your mind wants to fight it? In this week’s episode, Matt and Steve dive into the real-life struggle of acceptance after Matt was sidelined by Lyme disease. No gym, no long walks, barely enough energy to get through the grocery store. It felt like life was slipping by… and the only way forward was accepting what is.

Acceptance is one of the core tools of recovery. But it’s also one of the hardest. It can feel like surrender. It can feel like failure. It can feel like giving up. But as we talk about in this episode, acceptance isn’t quitting — it’s acknowledging reality so we can respond with honesty, humility, and sanity.

We explore:

• How illness brought Matt face-to-face with limitations
• Why rest can feel like punishment
• The difference between being powerless and being helpless
• Leveling pride to ask for help
• How acceptance reduces frustration, anger, and burnout
• Why control and perfectionism make acceptance so challenging
• What the recovery program teaches us about letting go

If you struggle with slowing down, asking for help, or accepting the things you emotionally want to resist — this episode is for you.

We’d love to hear your story:

What does acceptance mean in your life?

Email us at matt@soberfriendspod.com or connect on soberfriendspod.substack.com

Transcript

Steve: 0:01

It's like you, like if I can't do physical stuff, like walk and stuff like that, I get really antsy, I get really antsy. And mentally I get antsy. I mean, it's not a good place. So I really have to work on acceptance of those types of things. I really have to figure out how to deal with that because acceptance breeds frustration for me and frustration breeds anger. And so that's what happened. That's the connection, like it's a domino effect. Right? And then I get angry and then I lash out. And, you know, early on when my wife was struggling with some of her health stuff, I, that was happening to me, right? Every once in a while I would lash out. So yeah, acceptance is always a good topic because it's a building block of, of our sobriety.

Matt: 0:51

Welcome to the sober friends podcast where if you're on the path to sobriety or you're so curious, you're in the right place. My name's Matt over there is Steve. Steve, what's going on? Happy week of Thanksgiving.

Steve: 1:05

Good morning, Matt. Yeah, busy time at the, at the Steve's household.

Matt: 1:10

Yep.

Steve: 1:10

Getting ready for a crowd. We host and we have, we have a full house about 14 of us or so.

Matt: 1:16

Oh my.

Steve: 1:17

And where I live in Manchester, Connecticut, there's a big road race, a running race that's world-known actually.

Matt: 1:26

And it's a great race.

Steve: 1:27

Yeah, it's a big thing for the community and, you know, we have a bunch of us, five of the, five of the 14 or whether they're running it. So it's a busy day. It's a busy week. So people start showing up Tuesday night and people will be around through Saturday. So,

Matt: 1:44

very

Steve: 1:45

A

Matt: 1:45

nice.

Steve: 1:45

lot of work, a lot of fun, a lot of good family, a lot of busy time for me, 'cause I do 95% of the work, but it's fun. It's, you know, nowadays having the family around, it's nice to do that. So, all is good here in the sobriety land.

Matt: 2:03

That is awesome. I have, I do a lot of the work as well. So I'm going to have to ask for help this time. So somebody sent us a text to the Buzzsprout website and they said, Hey, where are you guys? I look forward to every Tuesday. Is everything okay? And the answer is, yeah, everything's good. I, we're going to talk acceptance today because there's some things I have to accept. One of them is I'm pretty limited this week. So I got a tick by a couple of weeks ago and thought nothing of it. The tick was kind of hanging in my leg. Like, you'd see a guy's legs hanging out from the top of a car trying to do some, some work on it, I didn't think anything of it, even though I had nice little bulls eye in my leg and then I started getting pretty severe aches. And it turns out I probably have Lyme disease and it flattened me. We didn't record last week because I basically couldn't get out of bed. I was achy. It felt like the worst flu I had. And even closing it on two weeks on Doxycycline. I just higher out easily. I could feel great. And then I go to the supermarket and that's enough to make me feel dizzy.

Steve: 3:23

Yeah.

Matt: 3:23

So this is, we talk about recovery things, not just being an abacement, not just being in a book. It's how you live your life. And I have had to live through acceptance over the past week. That I've had to be much more limited and I'm not crazy about it. There's been no gym for two weeks. Right. Been going every, every day. I can't go for my two mile walk. And early on I had to sit around just on the couch watching Netflix. And it felt like I was missing life.

Steve: 3:58

Yeah.

Matt: 3:58

But I still had to find a way towards acceptance, which has been hard, Steve.

Steve: 4:05

Yeah. Acceptance is a difficult thing. It's one of the things that we learned early on. I think those of us who come into, you know, a 12 step program, like a, that we have to do a lot of acceptance. You know, we start with accepting that we're alcoholics and that,

Matt: 4:22

right?

Steve: 4:22

you know, we couldn't fix that, right? So that's the beginning of it. And then it becomes this process of how we apply that throughout, you know, throughout our lives. We talk about it all the time here. You know, our recovery, our sobriety is not only in church basements, it's, it's every day of our lives. So we have to figure out those things of when, when things go bad and when things go, not the way we want them to go is what do we do with that information? But how do we,

Matt: 4:53

So

Steve: 4:54

how do we process it? So it's always a great topic because it's something that, you know, I've shared my struggles with my wife's health issues going on for

Matt: 5:06

past,

Steve: 5:06

the

Matt: 5:06

oh yeah.

Steve: 5:07

so I really have to work on acceptance of those type of types of things. I really have to figure out how to deal with that because, um, uh, and then I get angry and then I lash out and, you know, early on when my wife was struggling with some of her health stuff, I, that was happening to me, right? Every once in a while, I would lash out. So, yeah, acceptance is always a good topic because, you know, it's a building block of our, of our sobriety.

Matt: 6:06

It can feel like when you hear acceptance that I don't want to accept what acceptance is because it feels like giving up. And acceptance isn't giving up. It's not surrendering your identity. It is accepting the way things are of what, it's accepting of reality.

Steve: 6:25

And

Matt: 6:26

that is something, when we were still sick and suffering, we couldn't do. The reason that I couldn't admit I had a problem is I couldn't admit I had a problem. I couldn't accept that reality that I, I could find a path to drinking safely. And that just wasn't ever going to happen. So I had to accept a new reality, something that I hadn't, I hadn't anticipated that not drinking would be a better reality. It would be a lot easier. I think about this because I flipped into TikTok and whatever reason. My algorithm changed to people who are saying AA is a cult. And not like how there are times that we question, you know, this is what's good about AA, this is what's bad. It's like, no, no, no, you are expected to recruit five people and bring it with you. And it's a religion, it's like, whoa, this is in the AA. I know, I understand that there are things in AA that I don't like. And there are things in AA. I really like. But that's like, whoa, whoa, this is some crazy stuff. But it's, oh, God, I forgot how I even went down this topic. But I was on, I was on, I was on TikTok looking at some stuff. And it's, it's not about, it's not about giving up. It's about, I have something that's. Oh, I know where I was going down with this. It was like, and, and you're not. You're not free. You're not powerless over alcohol. And it was almost going down the path that you can learn to drink safely again. And my thought is, well, I don't want to, it's easier not to drink. I think about it. Like I, I didn't give up something. It's just, I found an easier path to life, a simpler path to life, acceptance that, well, what if I didn't drink? What am I losing? I don't know not much. As a matter of fact, I'm gaining more.

Steve: 8:25

Absolutely. You gain weight. You know, that's one of the things we talk about all the promises in our lives that come true. You don't, you don't understand how much you have to have to gain. When you, when you decide to stop drinking, at least the way we both, we both came into this program. And then, and you, you make a good point. And I just know when I was trying to accept certain certain things about myself, about my drinking. And even today, when I want to accept certain things, part of it is because I can't see it a future without those things, right? Just like

Matt: 8:58

yes,

Steve: 8:58

our alcohol, right? So it's the same thing. It's like, okay, well, I can't, I can't walk the dog, which I do religiously every day.

Matt: 9:07

I

Steve: 9:09

can't do physical things like I can't be outside. I can't do certain things. So I can't see well, what do I replace that with? Right? That was the same, that was the same issue when we had when we came into recovery. It's like, all right, I'm going to take away my drinking, which, which really takes up a lot of my time. And if not physically, and, and actually, right, but mentally, it takes up a lot of my time and energy of trying to make sure that I have what I want, I'm going to be able to drink when I want to drink as much as I want when I want. All those things that we did while we were out there active. And when we first start, we don't, we don't know, like, what am I going to fill that time with? Like, I'm going to be missing something. And, and that's a little scary, right? It is a little scary. Same thing like when you get a disease, like you're a fairly healthy guy.

Matt: 10:02

Yeah,

Steve: 10:03

definitely a healthy guy, we're active, we do stuff, we're not couch potatoes. Uhm, so when you start putting some health stuff in there, it gets a little scary, right? And like, "Okay, what am I gonna do with this?" I have a problem with my foot going on right now, and one of the interesting that we're talking about this, 'cause like, I should go see the doctor for this issue, right? I'm,

Matt: 10:27

yeah, she should.

Steve: 10:27

right, I should go see a doctor for this issue, but here's my thing. I'm afraid you didn't tell me, "Oh yeah, we could, you got something going on." I've got some type of thing. I don't know what it is, but maybe it's something that has to be removed some bottom of my foot. And my thought is, you know, he's gonna tell me that I can't, I can't be on my foot for a while. Right? And, and I don't want to hear that news. Like, I don't want to hear or somebody tell me, you know, I had a stress fracture a couple years ago and I had to wear a boot for six plus weeks and I hated it. I hated it every bit of it.

Matt: 10:57

Yep.

Steve: 11:00

But I, I still know I need to go do that, right? And I need to go at least have it checked out. And if that's the case, then I'm gonna have to accept that and I'm gonna have to try to figure out how. And again, for me, this is more mental than anything. How I mentally deal with all that stuff. Like, 'cause I could keep myself active doing other stuff. So, acceptance is really, first of all, it's like I said, accepting the situation as it is and then accepting the fact that either permanently, temporarily or permanently, we have to do some different stuff, right? So, and I just remembered like I was, it took me a long time to really come to understanding like what my alcohol is a mint and accepting the true, the true way the alcohol impacted my whole life,

Matt: 11:57

right? Mm-hmm.

Steve: 11:57

Where I just thought, oh yeah, I drank too much and yeah I did that. But I still did a lot of other good stuff and then I realized, well, wait a minute, this, it really impacted all aspects of my life. And it took a while for me to figure that out. And like you said, accept that and then move on to a real recovery phase, which I'm still in today.

Matt: 12:16

Right. You're bringing up something you touched upon and when you say, I don't want to go to the doctor. If you're listening to this, even if you're so precurian, you need to go to the doctor.

Steve: 12:27

Yeah.

Matt: 12:28

And you need to go to the doctor probably a lot more frequently than you've been doing. I try and be really good at this of going to the doctor. I accept it. So, I go to the doctor now or things and I'm not feeling well, I'll leave it good or urgent care if I can't get into my doctor or I schedule an appointment through the MyChart app. My practice is big enough that I can go see the nurse practitioner if I need to. And I don't mess around with that stuff anymore. I really try and focus on my health. Not just going to the doctor, exercise, eating right, all of that stuff. I had my wife drive me to the doctor when we went a week ago when I got my diagnosis because I accepted the fact that it's not safe for me to drive. I felt that lousy. And that was a lot for me to say, I need help. I don't feel comfortable driving myself. I'm glad I did that, but that took a lot of leveling pride, which is what goes into this acceptance piece of, you've got to level your pride sometimes to do the safe and the right thing. Sometimes that is loving the pride of okay, I'm going to go to the doctor, even though I'm afraid of what they're going to find. Afraid that maybe they find nothing or they can't figure it out. And then I'm stuck or I'm going to ask for help. And I'm going to level my pride and say I'm going to sit on the couch. And I'm going to let other people make dinner and clean the house and do the vacuuming, which I've had to do, which has not been easy. And I think a lot of this feels as though how I feel is permanent.

Steve: 14:12

Right.

Matt: 14:12

And I struggle with that patience of this will pass at some point and you have to be patient just getting through it. I'm not good at that. And I think most people who are alcoholics are not either.

Steve: 14:27

One hundred percent, like, like, I, same thing with me, right? I do a lot of the worker on the house, especially now I always have anyway. But to, to think that I'm going to have to sit back watch it be done

Matt: 14:41

and watch,

Steve: 14:42

by others. And then because you know, I still have control issues. judge how they're doing it, not up

Matt: 14:49

Yep.

Steve: 14:49

to my standard. And not be able to, not be able to relax in that situation. Again, that's what I said. Like, this is more mental for me than anything else. And I do try to go to the doctor, but I have a habit of not. And part of that, again, is because I'm healthy. I don't have a lot of problems, but when you were speaking about having your wife take you to the doctor, I remember years ago, I was in my late 40s and I was having some chest discomfort. Now there's no, there's no cardiac issues in my family. Like, no, no, we're not dropping. We die of cancer, but we don't drop dead for cardiac issues. So I remember calling my doctor and saying, "Listen, I got this going on." And she goes,"How old are you?" And I'm like,"I don't know. I was like 48." And she goes, "I think you should hang up the phone and call 911." I went, "No, I don't think so. I think I'll just try." And so I didn't. I got in my car and I drove myself, you know. But that's the kind of mentality that I have. It's like, it takes a lot for me to go, you know, something? And then a few years later it happened again.

Matt: 16:05

And

Steve: 16:05

And my wife's first husband died of a heart attack. And I remember standing in the kitchen and having to tell her, like, "Hey, I'm not feeling good." And at that time I asked her, I'm like, and she, you know, she's like, "All right, let's go." And again, it turned out to be some issues that you have with the cartilage in your chest that that mimics heart attacks. They said, the only, yeah, it's a really long medical name that I can never remember or pronounce. But I remember it, like, when I went for the work update, like, the only way to the only way to rule it out of a heart attack is actually to do all the cardiac workup.

Matt: 16:43

Yep.

Steve: 16:44

But it takes a lot for me to do that. And I have been trying to get better at it. But it's tough sometimes. It's tough. And again, it's more of a mental thing than anything else. And it's that acceptance that I don't want my life to change, right? I don't, I don't want to be sitting on the couch watching Netflix. It's not what I do. I don't sit there watching Netflix as an entertainment. When I do that, it feels a little bit like punishment to me.

Matt: 17:13

Yeah, that's how it feels like punishment to me. But it also feels like I'm letting my life slip away.

Steve: 17:19

Right.

Matt: 17:19

I'm not engaging with life. And it's rationally, that's not real, but emotionally, it's hard.

Steve: 17:29

Right.

Matt: 17:30

But there's also no alternative. What is the alternative to doing that? I can't go for my, I tried. I took the dogs for a walk last Sunday. I lasted 14 minutes and I was dizzy as hell. Had to get on the couch and just lay there for about a half hour to get my energy back. So there is no alternative. And yet there's that feeling of I feel powerless that I have no control over my life that I'm just my life is staring out the window right now. Or at least it's a little bit better, but that last Sunday was just staring out the window. And that felt awful. I'm not living my life. I'm not taking advantage of this weekend.

Steve: 18:17

Right.

Matt: 18:19

But in reality, what can I do? I mean, accepting powerlessness is not the same as being powerless. I'm powerless in the moment, but I do have agency over the things that I can do and how I can feel. I could choose at those times that I'm not well enough to do anything but take a nap or watch Netflix because I did a lot of napping. It was it was a victory on that Sunday a week ago that I didn't have to take a nap. It's like, okay, I can stay up the whole day and my resting is just I'm just gonna put my head down. I'm not gonna go to sleep. But I can hook my energy this way. But I also could accept that all right, I have the opportunity to be lazy and watch Netflix. I have the power to get out of bed and go down to the couch where it's brighter. I can change my environment, even if I can't get up and go for a run or get on a bike or go to the gym. Those are really hard and above on a hard time accepting it. But I also have to accept that if I don't slow down, this is going to drag on.

Steve: 19:27

Yeah, there's no question that we have to do. We have to give our bodies a chance to recover. Again, I just think about, we know talking about this acceptance thing brings me back to my first givement to the program. It's like a really you know, it knows early in those early days of recovery where you know, we really feel like shit, you know,

Matt: 19:47

you

Steve: 19:47

those early first few days like where you're withdrawing from the alcohol and your body still needs it and mentally mentally you're just a mess and you're you're Jonesin for a drink and yet you're fighting through all those things. Like you just need to give your body a chance to rest and reset. And one of the things I'll credit my wife for is like my wife challenges me all the time to do that. Like if I'm not feeling good, she'll say why don't you just go lay down?

Matt: 20:14

know,

Steve: 20:14

And a lot of times I'll say, but I don't have time to go lay down. Like I'll say I don't have time to do that. And a few weeks ago, I think I mentioned it on here on the podcast. I wasn't feel that was nauseous and I wasn't feeling good. And I think it was a Sunday too. And I just remember like every time I stood up, I was beat nauseous and dizzy and when I laid down, I was fine. And I was just laying on the couch. And I what I did was, you know, it was a Sunday, so this football game done I was able to lay on the couch and just put the TV on, not even watch it really, but listen to it. And every time I got up, it's like, I could start to feel better. And every time I get up, I would get dizzy again.

Matt: 20:52

Yep.

Steve: 20:53

My wife, it's nice for somebody to give for me personally, to reinforce that permission, that sometimes I don't want to give myself, right, to be able to do something like that. And my wife, my wife does that for me often. She'll say, just don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And I'm like, what about dinner? Don't worry about it.

Matt: 21:15

I

Steve: 21:16

have, I have a bowl of cereal tonight. Like, really? Right? So to give me that permission to do that. And I just have to learn. And again, this is why I'm in recovery. Like, these are the daily things that I struggle with. And like we talk about, is how do I live a life that's, that has serenity. You know, one of the things I've, we've

Matt: 21:36

hmm,

Steve: 21:36

talked about a lot, has serenity, right? And this is the point. It's like when you get to the situation where you can't do certain things, what starts to go? Just serenity starts to go, right? You start to have this mental struggle. And that's where the program, for me, gets me to refocus it like, okay, what's important. Like you said, this too shall pass.

Matt: 22:00

Yeah.

Steve: 22:01

And I even know, like, okay, probably tomorrow, I'll feel better. If I just blow off one Sunday, it's not a big deal. And it did, but actually by the end of, by the end of that day, I felt much better, and I was able to get up and have a bite to eat and things like that. So it's, it's a struggle sometimes, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of talk in our program and our book about acceptance and how we have to do that. A lot of our stories, a lot of our literature, talk about where we need to be on that subject.

Matt: 22:32

Our bodies do tell us a lot. And we're really good at ignoring our bodies, but there are times that our bodies say, rest.

Steve: 22:40

Yeah.

Matt: 22:41

We should rest. It's funny that you said about your wife giving you permission. I always feel like I need that permission of somebody to tell me I'm not being bad.

Steve: 22:50

Yeah.

Matt: 22:50

By resting and my wife has been very good at that of, I'll take care of it. Or there are things in the house that just aren't going to get done. Maybe there's some cleaning or some tidying up. It's just not going to get done right now. It'll get done later. I think that's the patient's issue. If it doesn't get done now, I don't trust the lever get done.

Steve: 23:13

Right.

Matt: 23:14

And so then that becomes the issue. And then I push myself and he end up going backwards. And this is where I really struggle with being patient in that this will pass. And I'll get back to reality. Just be patient. This is just reality for today. So surrendering is also asking for help and not being a perfectionist. I think podcast wise all the time. This podcast is not to the level of perfection that I expected to be in sound quality and content. And I put a lot of stress around that a lot of times and sometimes it's like what my level of bad is, the listening audience is just fine. That's what they need.

Steve: 24:05

Yeah, I struggle with that too. It's that sometimes. Perfect example is I'm getting the house ready for like I said, we have people come and stay our family from New Jersey, and we have a partially finished basement and they stay downstairs. So, you know, over the, you know, they usually come up from force to July and Thanksgiving. So in between it gets cluttered down. They could we don't use it. Like it's not a space we use. So especially with my wife's health issues. A lot of stuff is just literally we picked up rugs from the hallways and stuff because my wife's using a walker and like it's just thrown down there and I find myself down there doing stuff to a level of perfection. That nobody cares about except me, right? Nobody cares about except me. And I understand that that causes myself stress. I actually was thinking this last night as I was down there doing some things. Like I'm doing this stuff that people would think is crazy. Like in the unfinished part, like I'm vacuuming the unfinished floors, the cement floors, the basement. And the reason why I do that is because we have a second fridge down there that we used during the holidays. So people will be walking that area, getting stuff in and out of that fridge. So I wanted to make sure it just wasn't all dirty and stuff. But again, that's more of a me thing than anything else, right? And uh, because it's not filthy down there, it's like, you know, it's, but, and I think about it, and I'll end up spending another, you know, it probably end up spending two or three extra hours down there that I probably don't need to do. And meeting with the people and doing this podcast, right, this, this podcast, we talk about it all the time. This podcast is part of our recovery,

Matt: 26:12

Yes.

Steve: 26:12

right? You and I get together every Sunday morning for about a half an hour and we talk recovery.

Matt: 26:18

Yep.

Steve: 26:19

And we talk what's going on in our lives. And so it becomes a part. So

Matt: 26:24

Yep.

Steve: 26:24

it's, it's, it's another touch for me, right? It's another touch for me to my program. And we have a friend Lori from our Monday Night Meeting. Lori will give a shout out to Lori, although I don't think she listens to us, shame on her. She celebrates 10 years of sobriety today.

Matt: 26:41

Hey.

Steve: 26:42

Today, and she is speaking. She was looking for a speaking gig, and I got her, I have a guy who always has like a half a dozen or 10 speaking commitments opportunities. And I reached out to him like, Hey, do you got anything around this day? He goes, Oh, I got one first thing that exact Sunday. Do you want it? So she's speaking tonight out in Simsbury. So I'll go

Matt: 27:03

Okay.

Steve: 27:03

meet her. Yeah. I'll go meet her and support her. And again, it's another touch of a program. All right, for me to go out, just do a meeting, see a friend here, her speak. All that kind of stuff. That's how I manage all those things, right? Like those, those habits are still things that I deal with. And I manage them by going to my program, touching with other alcoholics, touching base with other alcoholics. And just keeps me focused on what's important in my life, which is number one, my sobriety and number two, you know, taking care of the people that I care about in love, really.

Matt: 27:44

I'd really like to hear from you about what acceptance means. Where do you struggle? Where do you excel? What lessons can you give to Steven me? Matt, it's soberfriendspod.com. We also have a substack today. It's soberfriendspod. substack.com. It is where I'm going to point the website eventually or try and write on a weekly basis and give you a little bit different of a way of exploring the topic, come follow us. Doesn't cost you anything unless you want to and help support the mission. Steve, thanks for doing this today.

Steve: 28:29

Hey, Matt, thanks for having me.

Matt: 28:31

And we will see everybody next week, bye everybody!