Our addictions are so overpowering and all-encompassing that they have a way of taking over our lives and causing us to feel a deep sense of unfulfillment. We don’t feel fulfilled or satisfied with our lives as they are. We don’t feel content with who we are as people. We struggle with feeling inadequate, undeserving and unworthy. We’ve created lifestyles that revolve around our drugs of choice and our relentless need to get high. When we self-medicate with our addictions, we’re not only numbing ourselves from our pain, we’re also blocking ourselves from doing the emotional work necessary to find ourselves and our path in life. We’re preventing ourselves from finding our identity, our mission and our purpose. In order to feel fulfilled, we need to explore ourselves, our identities, our needs and desires, our talents and passions. Our gifts are the path to our fulfillment, but when we’re high and zoned out, we’re unable to explore our gifts. Oftentimes we don’t even know what those gifts are. We’re essentially avoiding ourselves and our truth.
Many of us feel unfulfilled because we haven’t taken the time to get to know who we truly are. We’ve accumulated years of emotional issues, life problems and difficult circumstances that act as layers that get piled on top of our inner core, blocking us from the truth of who we are. We use our relationships, along with our drugs of choice, to distract us from the hard work of finding ourselves. We’re desperately trying to escape our unhealed pain. As a result, we become deeply disconnected from our inner selves. We feel lost, misaligned, confused and hopeless. We suffer from severe mental illnesses that accompany our addictions and function as co-occurring disorders, amplifying and exacerbating our pain. We feel unfulfilled because we haven’t developed the tools necessary for self-exploration and self-discovery. Until we do, we might always feel unhappy with ourselves, discontent with our lives, and deeply unsatisfied. We’ll move through our lives going through the motions rather than having the drive or the motivation to find our true happiness.
Recovery is more than abstaining from our drugs of choice. It is also doing the emotional work of finding what will give us fulfillment in our lives, what will make us feel satisfied, what will bring us happiness. This journey is far from easy, but when we undertake the mission of self-exploration, the result is an unshakeable joy that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
Your new life starts today. Let Riverside Recovery be your support system as you do the work to heal. Call (800) 871-5440 for more information on our addiction recovery. treatment programs.