Life After Sobriety: What If Success Still Doesn’t Make You Feel Like You’re Enough?

When I sat down to talk with Todd Crandell, founder of Racing for Recovery, for the *Sober Life Rocks* podcast, I knew his story included more than three decades of sobriety, recovery from addiction, several books and more than 130 Ironman races. I expected we would talk about resilience, recovery and the kind of determination it takes to rebuild a life after addiction. We did talk about those things, but somewhere along the way I became much less interested in all the finish lines Todd had crossed and much more interested in what he had been chasing through all of them. Early in our conversation, Todd described a period in his life by saying that he had everything, but inside he had nothing. That sentence immediately took me back to my own experience in treatment, because one of the things that made it so difficult for me to understand why I was there was that I still had so much evidence that I was okay. I had a job. I was raising my children and involved in their lives. I was functioning. I could point to all sorts of things that seemed to prove that whatever my problems were, they couldn’t possibly be *that* bad. Then, several weeks into treatment, a man came in to share his story. He didn’t sound like the stories I thought I was supposed to identify with. He still had his job, his home, his wife and his children, and yet he talked about this enormous emptiness inside. https://youtu.be/OYQdPOsqC6w I remember leaning in. For the first time, I recognized myself in someone else’s story, and I began to understand that perhaps I had been using the wrong evidence to determine whether I was okay. I was looking at everything I had managed to hold together on the outside without really understanding what was happening inside me. That was part of what I heard in Todd’s story too, although his life and mine are very different. Todd lost his mother to suicide when he was only three years old. There was no way a child that young could understand a loss like that, but not having language for a wound doesn’t mean the wound isn’t there. As Todd grew older, alcohol and drugs eventually became part of the way he lived with what was happening inside him, and recovery became the way he began to build a different life. What I found particularly interesting, though, was that getting sober didn’t magically resolve the deeper question. Todd went on to build a life most people would consider extraordinary. He created Racing for Recovery and devoted himself to helping other people. He wrote books. He became an athlete capable of completing something I can’t imagine doing once, much less more than 130 times. From the outside, there was no shortage of evidence that Todd Crandell was disciplined, successful, valuable and worthy. And yet our conversation kept returning to what happens when you spend your life looking outside yourself for proof of something you don’t quite believe inside. I know something about that too. For much of my life, I became very good at being the person I thought a particular situation required. I could be capable, agreeable, certain and dependable. I could read a room and figure out which parts of myself were useful there. What I wasn’t nearly as good at was knowing what I actually felt. There was a time when I literally kept an emotion wheel on my refrigerator because someone could ask me how I was feeling and I genuinely didn’t know how to answer. Frustrated was usually available to me. It took me a while to learn that there were often other emotions underneath it, including fear. Fear was much harder for me to admit because it didn’t fit particularly well with the person I had learned to be. I was supposed to know what I was doing. I was supposed to have things handled. As Todd and I talked, I began thinking about how easy it is to mistake being highly functional for being whole. We can become incredibly accomplished while still carrying around a belief that perhaps the next accomplishment will finally settle the question of whether we are enough. That doesn’t make accomplishment unhealthy. Todd genuinely loves athletics. Sports, music and health were some of the things that helped reconnect him with parts of himself that existed before addiction took over. Over time, education, spirituality, service and his work through Racing for Recovery became part of that life too. But there is a difference between doing something because it makes your life bigger and doing it because you need it to make you feel bigger. I think that difference became especially interesting when Todd talked about his recent knee surgery. He had to cancel several races and step away, at least temporarily, from something that had become a very visible part of who he was. I wondered what that would feel like for someone who had completed more than 130 Ironmans. What I heard wasn’t panic about getting back to the next starting line. Todd talked about healing. He talked about his family, his work, his writing and the other parts of his life that deserved his attention. I found myself thinking that perhaps being okay with *not* doing another Ironman right now says as much about Todd’s recovery as finishing 130 of them ever could. Because at some point, all of us lose access to identities we thought were permanent. Bodies change. Careers end. Children grow up. Relationships change. The thing we were known for may no longer be the thing we do. If our sense of worth has become completely attached to one of those identities, losing it can feel a lot like losing ourselves. Todd’s story made me think that one of the longer and less talked-about parts of recovery may be discovering that you can let an identity change without your value changing with it. That’s a very different challenge from simply not drinking. In early sobriety, not drinking really was enough for me. I remember being given a ten-minute token and being told that if forever felt impossible, I only had to get through the next ten minutes. There were times when I watched the clock, turned that token over and started another ten. Eventually, though, you accumulate enough ten-minute stretches that you’re no longer simply trying to get through the day. You have a life in front of you, and then the questions become much more interesting. What do I actually want? What do I care about? Who am I when I’m not organizing my life around alcohol? And perhaps most difficult of all, can I believe that who I am is enough even when I’m not accomplishing anything particularly impressive? That last question isn’t really about sobriety at all. I think it’s one of the reasons this conversation with Todd has stayed with me. Most of us are performing in some way long before we ever walk into a professional networking event or a cocktail reception. We learn which versions of ourselves receive approval and which ones make other people uncomfortable. We learn to be successful, funny, agreeable, strong, productive or easygoing. And then we enter spaces where there are even more signals about what we’re supposed to do in order to fit in. Sometimes one of those signals is a drink in our hand. Todd and I talked about the role alcohol plays in gatherings, and it made me think about how often we confuse the rituals surrounding connection with connection itself. Alcohol can make socializing easier for some people, and I’m not interested in taking that choice away from them. But I am very interested in why someone who doesn’t want to drink can still feel as though declining one requires an explanation. I spent more than eighteen years hiding my own sobriety in part because I didn’t want people to see me differently. I had already spent a lifetime becoming good at figuring out how to belong, so it makes sense to me now that I would try to manage that part of myself too. What feels different today is that I’m much less interested in belonging that requires that kind of performance. And perhaps that is where Todd’s story and the work we’re doing at Sober Life Rocks intersect for me. We talk a lot about sober choices, but increasingly I think we’re talking about something underneath them. We’re talking about what it takes for people to walk into a room as they actually are and believe there is a place for them there. Not because they accomplished enough to earn it. Not because they have the right title. Not because they’re entertaining enough or confident enough. And certainly not because they’re holding the same thing in their glass as everyone else. Todd has crossed more finish lines than most of us could count, and I don’t want to diminish what those accomplishments mean to him. But after listening to his story, I don’t think another finish line is the most interesting place he’s headed. I think the more interesting journey is learning that there may be nothing left to prove. And for those of us who have spent a lifetime believing that if we could just accomplish enough, perform well enough or become enough, we might finally feel worthy of the life we already have, that’s a pretty powerful idea. You can hear my full conversation with Todd Crandell on the Sober Life Rocks podcast, where we talk about addiction, long-term sobriety, life after recovery, the childhood loss that shaped him, Racing for Recovery, more than 130 Ironman races, identity, self-worth and what it means to keep growing long after getting sober is no longer the hardest part of the journey. Stay Connected to Todd: https://www.facebook.com/soberultraman/  www.toddcrandell.com  www.racingforrecovery.org  https://www.instagram.com/soberultraman/   https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-crandell-6b89132/ The post Life After Sobriety: What If Success Still Doesn’t Make You Feel Like You’re Enough? first appeared on Sober Life Rocks.