Category: Alumni

Part of our recovery work involves setting intentions for ourselves and our sobriety. Our intentions are the goals we have for ourselves, the practices we want to incorporate as regular parts of our routines, the ways we’ll actively work to keep ourselves on track with our recovery. When we set our intentions, we’re often brand […]

When we’ve finished treatment, we sometimes want to think that the bulk of our work in recovery is over. While it’s true that we’ve laid the important foundation for our recovery program, the journey of our recovery has just begun. We sometimes think that because we’re no longer in treatment, we can ease up on […]

Many of us in recovery know that when we leave our treatment center, our recovery work is far from over. We’ll still have intense inner healing work to do. We still have to revisit our childhoods and retrieve suppressed memories. We have to reprogram our subconscious minds and confront the deeply rooted fears that are […]

One of the greatest challenges to our recovery is the persistence with which we feel cravings to use our drugs of choice. Our addictive substances and behaviors formed such a huge part of our lives and our identities that they often overtook us entirely. It’s not realistic to think that once we’re sober we’ll suddenly, […]

When we’re doing the emotional work of recovery, one of the hardest emotions to shed is our shame. Many of us were conditioned from early childhood to carry guilt and shame within us, not only for our mistakes and wrongdoings, but also for our shortcomings, flaws and imperfections. We constantly felt inadequate, sometimes because our […]

Part of the important work we do in recovery is finding ourselves, rebuilding our sense of self and discovering our purpose. We can find that throughout our struggles with addiction, our sense of purpose eluded us. We didn’t know what we were meant to do with our lives. We were confused about our mission. We […]

When we finish a treatment program, we’ve begun to build the foundation for our recovery work, but we will need to keep up with it consistently if we want to have lasting results. One of the most important elements of that foundation is the emotional work we do to restore our faith in ourselves and […]

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). As we’re working to recover, we learn that the challenges we face in our recovery journey don’t just pertain to maintaining our sobriety. They are mental and emotional in nature, and they actually determine how well we will […]

When we are ready to recover, how successful we are in our recovery all depends on how willing we are to do the work to develop healthy habits for ourselves. We want to eliminate all of the destructive habits that were limiting us and holding us back, contributing to our self-destruction and self-sabotage. We want […]

When we’re in recovery and reintegrating back into our former lives, there are some emotional challenges we confront that can act as blocks to our healing. Part of our recovery work, along with our abstinence, is facing these blocks and doing our best to heal the parts of ourselves that are limited and restricted by […]