Very often we can become triggered by something specific, a person, event, situation, issue, or problem, without understanding why. Sometimes our emotional responses baffle us. We’ve become hyper-sensitive. We’re feeling troubled, worried, bothered and much sadder, and more anxious than usual. We might experience intense mood swings, along with trouble sleeping and eating. We might […]
Category: Resource Center
How We Enable Our Loved Ones’ Addictions
When we have loved ones struggling with addiction, our inclination is to want to help, nurture and protect them in any way we can. It hurts us beyond words to see them suffering and living with so much pain. It causes us tremendous stress, worry and anxiety to watch them self-destruct. We love and care […]
Why Should We Practice Healthy Confrontation in Recovery?
Many of us recovering from addiction are also struggling to figure out our relationship issues, our life challenges, our behavioral patterns, and all the complexities therein. We’re still grappling with contentious relationship dynamics, turmoil, instability and insecurity in our closest relationships. Many of us are in relationships with other addicts, and some of the issues […]
Surrendering to the Healing Journey
When we are actively working towards recovery, there are some habits we hold onto that can slow down our progress and impede our ability to get well. We have a hard time relinquishing control over how we think things should go. We hold on tightly to certain expectations. We worry excessively, we obsess about things, […]
Finding the Strength to be Honest with Ourselves in Recovery
As we’re doing the work to recover, we find that many of our mental and emotional patterns have been contributing to our addictive patterns, often without our being conscious of them. We’ve developed patterns of denial, secrecy and dishonesty. We’ve been dishonest with the people around us but also more importantly with ourselves. We’ve lied […]
What is the Difference Between Solitude and Isolation?
When we’ve been struggling with addiction and mental illness, we often will fall into patterns of isolating ourselves and avoiding any kind of social interaction and interpersonal connection. We’re afraid to confide in people lest they judge us more than we’re already judging ourselves. We’re afraid of being told to just get over our depression, […]
Cultivating Inner Peace
Our work when healing from addiction goes beyond sobriety and abstinence, although these are important to our recovery. The true objective of our recovery is to be able to cultivate the inner peace, calm and fortitude we need to handle anything life throws at us. We want to be able to stay grounded and centered, […]
Navigating Confusion in Recovery
Our recovery can be an immensely confusing time in our lives, when we’re coming out of the dark cloud of addictive dependence but perhaps not feeling totally confident yet in our sobriety. We feel confused as to what path we should take in life, what our purpose is, and where we’re headed. We feel confusion […]
Why Do We Hide From Ourselves?
As we learn more about our addictions, we come to discover that they are not just extreme attachments to substances and behaviors, they are also our way of distracting ourselves from our pain. They are our attempt at trying to escape from it. We run from our pain. We bury and suppress the painful memories […]
How Social Anxiety Can Block Our Recovery
Our struggles with addiction are often compounded by our battles with mental health issues, particularly depression and anxiety, as well as the different kinds of anxiety disorders we experience such as social anxiety. Our mental illnesses can make coping with our addictions and trying to recover from them that much harder. When we have social […]